Table of Contents

Apia -- Collingwood -- Greymouth -- Hauraki Plains (Elstow, Te Aroha & Kerepehi) -- Hicks Bay -- Maromaku Valley -- Mercer -- Miranda -- Mosgiel -- Mt Roskill [Auckland] -- Ohinemutu -- Pegasus -- St Bathans -- Scott Base -- Tangimoana -- Wainuiomata -- Waiouru -- Wanaka -- Whakarewarewa -- Whanganui -- Winton.

Promotional Information

"Steve Braunias's work goes beyond what we expect in a travel article ... He shares with us the intimacies of people's lives, their thoughts and beliefs, the values of their communities, and so the deep meanings of places... A writer the whole world would like to hear about." - Jonathan Lorie, judge, 2012 Cathay Pacific Travel Writers' Awards.

About the Author

Steve Braunias has won over 20 journalism awards, a Montana Book Award, fellowships to Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship. He is a frequent speaker at writers' and readers' festivals, editor-in-residence at Wintec School of Media Arts, Hamilton, and writer for many primetime TV series. He was also a regular panellist on TVNZ7's The Good Word. This is his sixth book.

Reviews

In this funny, moving, sometimes terrifying book, our country reveals itself; people and places are never as they first appear. Full of astonishing phrases, insights, and provocations, Civilisation is like a series of great New Zealand novels bound up in one extraordinary book." —Emily Perkins, author, The Forrests

"Steve Braunias could be a character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, traipsing to places like St. Bathans and Mercer, inviting himself into homes to seek out those little nuggets. More often than not, he finds them."  —Wallace Chapman, radio and television host, Back Benches

"Provocative, literate, disrespectful . . . eminently readable."  —Press

"Steve Braunias shares with us the intimacies of people's lives, their thoughts and beliefs, the values of their communities, and so the deep meanings of places. . . . A writer the whole world would like to hear about."  —Jonathan Lorie, author, The Traveller's Handbook