Gavin McLean: 100 Historic Places in New Zealand

By MARGIE THOMSON

If anything will give you a feel for the richness of our nation's history, it will be this zesty, pictorial book. McLean's style is informal, colourful and unfailingly well informed.

He excels at anecdote - a large part of his mission is to make the past come alive, and this means not just offering us information about dates and buildings, but about the people, Maori and Pakeha, who lived and worked in the various landscapes of the past - and pithy contextualising: "Like elites elsewhere, the rich made for the ridges," he comments, about Auckland's Princes St merchants' houses.

From the Otuataua Stonefields of 1200, to the Denniston incline, to the lovely limestone buildings of Oamaru's Tyne St, this is fascinating from start to finish and McLean thoughtfully provides suggestions for further reading.

Hodder, Moa Beckett

$39.95