![]() ![]() ![]() He offers a story of progress, of a society growing in diversity and independence as the twentieth century gave way to the twenty-first. In between the preand post-history, King covers all the bases we expect in a conventional general history: major political and economic developments are noted wars are fought, lost and won. King charts a predictable journey from the prehistory of the land through to an optimistic ‘Posthistory’ conclusion, where he claims that most New Zealanders are ‘commonsensical and tolerant’ (a reading challenged by the aftermath of Don Brash’s recent Orewa speech). There is little in The Penguin History of New Zealand that will surprise the readers of this journal. Not a writer to resort to italics lightly, we should heed his warning. His audience, he tells us, is the ‘curious and intelligent’ general reader, those ‘who are not historians’. IN THE PREFACE of his new general history of New Zealand, Michael King states that ‘this book is not written for other historians’. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ħ7 The Penguin History of New Zealand. ![]()
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