Christchurch Photo Hunt 2015
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‘Arrivals and Departures — The Journeys that Have Shaped Us’. Take ownership of your city’s heritage: send in some of your old photos to help grow a photographic archive. You could win a tablet or eReader. Copies of photograph entries may be displayed in libraries and uploaded to Kete Christchurch.
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| The Orpheus clock: The search for my family's art treasures stolen by the Nazis by Simon GoodmanAuthor Simon Goodman was born in London and raised in the Church of England, having only a vague awareness of his Jewish heritage. After his father died, Goodman learned that his grandparents were part of a wealthy German banking family, and that the Nazis had murdered many of his family members and stolen their valuable collections. Learning about his father's fruitless quest to find the family's treasures and get them back, Simon took up the challenge of negotiating with museums, governments, and illicit dealers. The Orpheus clock provides a fascinating account of these efforts. |
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| Avenue of spies: A true story of terror, espionage, and one American family's heroic resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris by Alex KershawIn Nazi-occupied Paris, on the exclusive Avenue Foch, the French Resistance operated under the very noses of Vichy collaborators and the Gestapo. One resident of the Avenue, American doctor Sumner Jackson, volunteered to assist the work of the French Resistance, helping wounded pilots escape from the hospital and passing messages from the Resistance in France to their counterparts in Britain. Drawing on written records and interviews with Sumner's son Phillip, author Alex Kershaw movingly portrays the atmosphere of fear in occupied Paris and the terrifying, disturbing events that unfolded as the war progressed. Avenue of Spies offers edge-of-your-seat reading about a little-known chapter of World War II. |
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New Zealand's worst disasters : True stories that rocked a nation
by Hutchins, Graham
Graham Hutchins describes some of the most extraordinary events in New Zealand history. Who knew that a fire killed 39 people at Seacliff Mental Hospital in 1942? That 10 people died in a lahar on White Island in 1914? That a yacht race between Lyttelton and Wellington in 1951 resulted in 10 fatalities? That a tornado ripped through 150 houses in Hamilton in 1948? A fire raging through Raetihi in 1918 was so fierce it destroyed houses, shops and 11 timber mills. Drownings were so common here in the 19th century that they were called 'the New Zealand death'. These and many other remarkable stories are told in this eye-opening book. While it describes accidents and tragedies, it also reveals acts of heroism. For when human beings make mistakes, others often achieve daring feats of rescue.
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God and Mrs Thatcher: The battle for Britain's soul
Few people are aware that Margaret Thatcher was a devout Christian or that she was a preacher before she was a politician. As a child, she would sit in the pews listening to her lay-preacher father, Alf Roberts, hammer home sermons on the Protestant work ethic, God-given liberty and the sanctity of the individual. As her father's archives reveal, it was in the pulpit of Finkin Street's Wesleyan Chapel in Grantham where Thatcherism was born. Margaret Thatcher may have set out to reinvigorate the nation with the non-conformist values of her father, but in the end she created a country that was not more Christian, but more secular; and not more devout, but entirely consumed by a new religion: capitalism.
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Bullrush! A celebration of the great New Zealand game
by Slack, David
Bullrush was the best game anyone ever thought of. You didn't need a ref, you didn't need a whistle, you didn't need a ball. All you needed was a decent stretch of grass. It was a stampede of bare feet, it was grazed knees and torn shirts, it was a game that never took itself too seriously. Arriving on the first immigrant ships from Britain, the game took hold quickly in the new colony. Simple, sometimes brutal, always thrilling, it was a childhood rite of passage, no adults involved, handed down from generation to playground generation. Kiwi kids couldn't get enough of it. And then one day they banned it, the fools. Or did they? Featuring the memories of a wide range of people, from All Blacks to actors, David Slack pays tribute to one of the great unofficial institutions of New Zealand culture.
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| The conquering tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 by Ian W. TollAcclaimed historian Ian Toll chronicles the Allied counteroffensive against Japan from mid-1942 to mid-1944. This absorbing account includes compelling battle narratives, details of policy meetings, insight into rivalry among the military services, and personal reports from those who witnessed the events. The strategy and technological advances of the amphibious campaign come alive, along with the personalities of both American and Japanese leaders. This well researched and absorbing book provides irresistible reading about the Pacific theatre in World War II. |
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Dynasty : The rise and fall of the House of Caesar
by Tom Holland
Tom Holland gives a dazzling portrait of Rome's first imperial dynasty. Dynasty traces the full astonishing story of its rule of the world: both the brilliance of its allure, and the blood-steeped shadows cast by its crimes. Ranging from the great capital rebuilt in marble by Augustus to the dank and barbarian-haunted forests of Germany, it is populated by a spectacular cast: murderers and metrosexuals, adulterers and druids, scheming grandmothers and reluctant gladiators. Dynasty is the portrait of a family that transformed and stupefied Rome.
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Circling the square : Stories from the Egyptian revolution
by Wendell Steavenson
In January 2011, as the crowds gathered to protest Mubarak's three decades of rule in Egypt, Wendell Steavenson went to Cairo to cover the story. As she walks among the tents and the tanks, falling into conversation, sharing cigarettes and cold soda, Steavenson tells the story of a seismic historical moment as it is experienced by ordinary citizens. Steavenson captures the cacophony of dizzying events as protests and elections ebbed and flowed around the revolution, tipping it towards democracy and then back into the military's hands.
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Munich playground
by Ernest R. Pope
As senior correspondent for Reuters in Munich from 1936-1941, American Ernest Pope saw the cruel and outrageous behavior of Nazis in their native habitat. In Munich they ran wild, let their hair down, and indulged in every fantasy money and power could avail them. Pope knew, saw or interviewed all the top Nazis and dozens of lower-level officials, including some of Hitler's security. He saw the Nazis for what they were: a corrupt, debauched, all-too-human menace.
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Historians count the Gilded Age as beginning in 1865, 150 years ago, and ending early in the 20th century. These books provide informative and engaging views of the period.
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| The Murder of the century: The Gilded Age crime that scandalized a city and sparked the tabloid wars by Paul CollinsLate in the Gilded Age, in 1897, parts of a body started showing up in locations around New York City. The police eventually built a case around the grisly remains that pointed to a sensational love triangle and created a bonanza for the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. The Murder of the Century offers thrilling accounts of journalists competing with the police to solve the crime, a trial in which the defense claimed the supposed victim wasn't even dead, and vivid details of the period (including the stink of rats in the courtroom). True crime fans and aficionados of the Gilded Age shouldn't miss author Paul Collins' irresistible account combining both. |
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| The scarlet sisters: Sex, suffrage, and scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra MacPhersonIn their activities that sound like feminist initiatives of a century later, sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee "Tennie" Claflin shocked and fascinated Gilded Age America and the world: together they opened the first woman-owned stock brokerage; Victoria ran for president, choosing Frederick Douglass to join her ticket; Tennie ran for Congress and became the honorary colonel of a black National Guard regiment. They also published a newspaper and exposed prominent citizens' misdeeds through their investigative reporting. Myra MacPherson vividly portrays their campaigns to improve the status of women. Whether you're interested in women's history or avid for details of American life in the Victorian age, don't miss this well researched and engaging dual biography. |
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| Railroaded: The transcontinentals and the making of modern America by Richard WhiteTouted as the 19th century's most significant and ambitious technological achievement, America's transcontinental railroads also created unprecedented profiteering, federal corruption, and the exploitation of an economically vulnerable workforce. Needless competitive overbuilding inevitably drove the railway companies into bankruptcy one by one, but railroad owners stayed rich on generous U.S. government subsidies (and paid investors with stolen workers' wages). By 1893, the whole bloated mess sparked a series of bank failures that pitched the nation into the greatest financial panic it had ever seen. Hop aboard Railroaded for a "scathing and wonderful" (The Boston Globe) railway history laced with Gilded Age sleaze and up-to-the-minute economic relevance. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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