Biography & Autobiography

The heart-rending story of a seven-year-old 'Tampa' refugee who grew up to become a Fulbright scholar, highlighting the plight and potential of refugees everywhere.

Sonny Bill Williams (SBW) is a once in a hundred-year athlete with immense sporting talent in Rugby League, Rugby Union and Boxing. Sonny Bill has built an incredible career and sporting reputation across the globe. His athleticism has taken him from Auckland, where he grew up, t...o the highest sporting moments in Twickenham, Eden Park and Sydney's Olympic Stadium. But there is so much more to Sonny Bill Williams' life and journey than his on-field and in-the-ring triumphs. Sonny Bill's love of family, his faith, his skill and performance throughout his unparalleled sporting career, his ability to unite a team under pressure, his grace in owning his mistakes, the challenges of leaving home as a young man and dealing with a negative culture and the temptations that followed, and his courage in speaking out for the vulnerable and calling out injustice are all aspects of an inspiring life story. Sonny Bill Williams was the first Muslim to play for the All Blacks. Driven by a fierce moral compass, Sonny Bill Williams thoughtfully and authentically uses his standing and platform as both a UNICEF Ambassador and an elite sportsperson to speak out on political issues that confront the world today and to benefit those struggling in life. He is a dedicated family man, devoted to his faith, committed to his teammates, respectful of his fans and aware that the path he has taken can inspire and empower others. Working with Alan Duff, award-winning author of Once Were Warriors, this will be the must-read autobiography of the year.
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An open, honest and at times intensely personal memoir about race, fatherhood, marriage, masculinity, fitting in, and the things that shape our national character. Simon Bridges grew up as the son of a working-class Baptist preacher in Te Atatu, as the youngest of six children. I...n many ways he had a typical Kiwi upbringing, at a time when having little didn't seem to matter much. Yet for Bridges, his was the life of an outsider: experiencing otherness for being Maori, and yet an otherness from other Maori; a Westie with a thick accent, trying to break into the upper reaches of society; distanced from his father, an ageing man in his own world. As a young politician, Bridges soon came to realise he was an introvert in an extrovert's world, and a male leader who has never identified with New Zealand's idealised version of the strong, laconic, rugby-loving man. In National Identity, Bridges offers an attempt to question himself and the country he loves. Politics, crime, kai, music, nature: these are the stuff of a life. Through candid and self-aware reflections, he points out that politicians have become less robust, and that people don't participate as much anymore - eroding our institutions and national life. He speaks his mind on an education system in crisis, the decline of Christianity, and how being the smallest, most isolated developed country in the world explains why we are how we are. Authentic, brilliant, humorous and poignant, National Identity is a must-read New Zealand memoir.
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A raw memoir from television host Matt Chisholm on battling booze and depression and finding a way through.

Biography of English artist Isaac Coates and the historical Maori portraits he painted in Te Tau Ihu/Top of the South and the Wellington area, between1841 and 1845. Coates's meticulous records of each subject's name, iwi and place of residence are invaluable.