You are here: Home > Recreation > Good Reads > Literary Prizes > Montana New Zealand Book Awards

Recreation

Montana New Zealand Book Awards - History - 2008 finalists

The Montana New Zealand Book Awards are organised and administrated by Booksellers New Zealand, the trade association for booksellers and publishers.

Age Of Enterprise: Rediscovering the New Zealand Entrepreneur 1881 - 1910

Ian Hunter (Auckland University Press)
This book, which covers an area little touched by traditional historians such as Sinclair, Belich or King, shows how entrepreneurship and innovation transformed the New Zealand economy in the late nineteenth century. In particular it draws on case studies and historical evidence to reveal that the small, organic, rapidly expanding firm was the potent force in New Zealand's growth - the local small-time entrepreneur is the hero of this story. By focusing on the shape of our economic history Ian Hunter here fills a major gap in our knowledge of the colonial period which has derived largely from the work of social and political historians.

Devils on Horses

Terry Kinloch (Exisle Publishing)
Using the soldiers' original letters and diaries wherever possible, the author describes all the crucial battles against the Ottoman Turkish Forces, including Romani, Gaza, Bir El Abds and the massacre at Surafend. It is also the story of the horses, only one of the 2500 New Zealand horses that returned from the Middle East.

Te Tau Ihu o Te Waka Volume II: Te Ara Hou - The New Society

Hilary and John Mitchell (Huia Publishers)
The most comprehensive account of the impact of colonisation up to the start of the twentieth century throughout Nelson and Marlborough. This second volume of Te Tau Ihu o Te Waka A History of Māori of Nelson and Marlborough charts the effects of colonisation and European settlement on the tangata whenua of this area up to c.1900.  As well as illustrating the impact of Christianity, and Māori responses to British legal, education and government systems, it portrays Māori relationships with immigrants, and Māori alacrity in grasping opportunities offered by the new society in horticulture, trade, shipping, guiding and gold.
Description from the Montana New Zealand Book Awards site