While Dragging Our Hearts Behind Us
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Phoney Wars
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£20.96
Regular price
£27.95
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Phoney Wars
New Zealand Society in the Second World War
Sale price
£20.96
Regular price
£27.95
Only a few left
This book looks at the lives of New Zealanders during the greatest armed struggle the world has ever seen: the Second World War. It is not a political, economic or military history; rather it explores what life was like during the war years for ordinary people living under the New Zealand flag. It questions the war as a story of good against bad. All readers know that the Axis powers behaved ruthlessly, but how many are aware of the brutality of the Allied powers in bombing and starving enemy towns and cities? New Zealand colluded in and even carried out such brutal aggressions. Were we, in going to war, really on the side of the angels? Contrary to the propaganda of the time -- and subsequent memory -- going to war did not unite New Zealanders: it divided them, often bitterly. People disagreed over whether or not we should fight, what we were fighting for and why, who was fighting, who was paying, and who was dying. In this provocative and moving book, Stevan and Hugh Eldred-Grigg explore New Zealanders hopes and fears, beliefs and superstitions, shortages and affluence, rationing and greed, hysteria and humour, violence and kindness, malevolence and generosity, to argue that New Zealand need not have involved itself in the war at all.
Stevan Eldred-Grigg is a leading novelist and historian. His first novel, Oracles and Miracles, was a runaway bestseller. He is the author of many other books, fiction and non-fiction, among them Diggers, Hatters and Whores: The story of the New Zealand gold rushes (2008), and White Ghosts, Yellow Peril: China and New Zealand, 17901950 (2014). Two earlier books focused on the world wars. Kaput! (2000) is a novel that tells the story of an ordinary German housewife and mother coping with Nazi dictatorship and Allied bombing. The Great Wrong War: New Zealand society in World War I (2010) polarised readers, with its author accused by some of betraying his country, while others congratulated him for setting the record straight. He now turns his uncompromising gaze on WWII.
- ISBN-13
- 9780947522230
- Publisher
- Otago University Press
- Imprint
- Otago University Press
- Publication date
- 1 January 2018
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 424
- Dimensions
- 240 x 170 mm
- Illustrations
- colour illus
- Language
- English
