Maori History and Place Names of Hawke's Bay is a well-regarded regional history made available once more in this new edition. It represents a valuable study of Maori culture and a permanent record of people and place names in the Hawke's Bay that have always been known – but not always located – since early times. In the late 1940s J.D.H. Buchanan began studying, collecting and recording local traditions, conversations with district elders, family genealogies, early survey maps and Maori Land Court proceedings in the Hawke's Bay area. Following his death in 1961, Buchanan's notes were edited by David Simmons. Beginning form the moment Maori arrived in the area on the Takitimu, the book traces the history of local iwi including Ngati Kahungungu, Rangitane and Ngati Awa. Also featured are meticulous plans of pa sites, aerial photographs of the countryside, and a comprehensive gazetteer of place names.

Shortlisted for the NZ Post Award this fascinating, innovative biography is of a true original and significant figure in NZ's early colonisation. "I love doubters: of a truly honest doubter I have great hope." Printer, botanist and missionary, William Colenso was a nineteenth-century maverick, a true original. He protested at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, arguing that Maori did not fully understand its implications. He became a troubled conscience during the white-hot period of colonisation, maintaining his dissident voice throughout his career. Peter Wells refreshes our vision of this awkward, highly talented man, who lost his family after the church expelled him for fathering a child by a Maori woman. Rejected by church, family and friends, Colenso made botany his home and lovingly described the plants of New Zealand. At the same time he wrote a series of remarkable pamphlets that open up our past. 'I write for future generations,' he noted in 1881. The time has come to welcome Colenso back.