First read this at university and usually re-read it each year. Just finished it again recently and still never fails to inspire and inform.
Wonderful book, as good as the Penguin History of NZ is by Michael King, I still prefer reading this potted history of Aotearoa. Best gifted to those special souls who claim NZ has no history!
Great but tough read of the 1996 Everest climbing season and the tragic loss of eight climbers including kiwi legend Rod Hall.
Good book if climbing is something that interests you or if you like wondering what dangerous pursuits are like!
Essential reading for anyone mildly interested in the history of Aotearoa, Māori/Pakeha race relations and how we got to where we are as a nation.
Life-changing.
I was raised in the UK, my father was in the RAF during WWII, as such I was told of the privations and terrors of the blitz and beyond. To read about Germany's own privations and terrors during the same conflict changed me and my biases, I am better for having read this book.
Intimate, visionary, non-Muslim, leader, some will read this to find fault, some to be inspired, perhaps both! I find him to be the best leader the western world has produced in my lifetime and an exceptional writer too.
I read this as one of my daughters was living in Japan for 5 seasons and I wanted to experience some of what she was experiencing. Instead I was taken on a gentle and enchanting collision between the eastern and western worlds seen through the eyes of two twenty somethings who experience life in different yet similar ways. The friction between multi-generations, culture stresses felt by foreigners and wonderful insights into Japanese life, familial relationships and history was beguiling. I was genuinely sad when this book ended, I wanted it to keep going!
Janina is engaging, thoughtful, intelligent, solitary and someone I'd like to meet, in a public place! Her experiences are so far-fetched and unbelievable they instantly fall into the credible, especially when read in the age of firsts we live in! This book will leave the reader considering their own place in the world and their own motivations for what they do in life. Read it twice to gain the maximum from Janina's wisdom and creativeness.