Short cuts: Books to check out this weekend

The Near West

By Tania Mace

The Near West, by Tania Mace (Massey University Press), is a charming hardback history of Auckland’s inner-west villages: Grey Lynn, Arch Hill and Westmere. It follows Urban Village, a history of the other side of Ponsonby Rd, in 2008, and West: The History of Waitakere, in 2009. Via copious research and historical images, Mace delves into the neighbourhoods’ early history, education, pursuits and local characters.

Founding Documents of Aotearoa New Zealand

By Paul Moon

Accompanying the evolution of modern nations is a trail of documents “that serve as signposts to the history and development of those states”, notes historian Paul Moon in Founding Documents of Aotearoa New Zealand (White Cloud Books). Ours include Cook’s map and treaty copies, the Declaration of Independence, documents relating to women’s suffrage, the Maketū execution and the National Anthem. It’s a bare-bones book, but as a rough guide it holds a fascination.

Safe Enough

By Lee Child

When Lee Child published his first Jack Reacher novel, two things happened: the novel was optioned for a movie and he got a request for a short story for an anthology. He eventually wrote dozens. None made remotely as much money as a Reacher, but, as Child says in Safe Enough (Bantam), it was fun. As are the stories.

Murder in the Gulag

By John Sweeney

“Alexei Navalny was killed in large part because of the West’s appeasement of Putin,” writes John Sweeney in Murder in the Gulag (Headline). Sweeney is not Solzhenitsyn, thought the Times, “but he has cracked big stories for decades with his doorstopping, bloodhound style”. That style includes calling people gits and psychos, but the book is full of diverting details of Navalny’s life, brutal imprisonment and death.