Auckland: The Twentieth-Century Story out now

 Auckland: The Twentieth-Century Story

Paul Moon

A bold and original account of what grew Auckland to become our biggest city last century and how that reflects on all of Aotearoa

’Auckland is ambiguously a part of New Zealand yet apart from it — a relationship that has generated both vibrancy and, on occasion, tension.'

 

The relationship of New Zealand’s largest city to the rest of the country is just one of the tensions that Professor Paul Moon teases out in this bold new history of Auckland in the twentieth century. 

How different that relationship was in 1900, when Auckland was just one among equals across the four main centres. What followed over the next ten decades was a remarkable transformation — the result of dramatic changes in populations, cultures, beliefs, aspirations and senses of itself. 

 Auckland: The Twentieth-Century Story journeys through the mosaic of cultures and lifestyles, anxieties and hopes, disasters and triumphs, virtues and vices that led to this transformation. 

Rather than a formal history or chronicle of events and personalities, this is an impressionistic approach, highlighting events because of what they say about the people and time. 

Drawing on diaries, oral history, newspapers and other media, Moon illuminates themes including housing, the harbours, tangata whenua struggles, shopping culture, the immigrant experience and the pervading sense that Auckland sat at the edge of the world yet at its centre.

This crisply written, engaging history will give readers everywhere a sense of a city that has felt triumph and failure but continues to develop and look to the future. 

The Author

Paul Moon (ONZM) is a professor of history at the Auckland University of Technology and the author of more than 30 books of history and biography. He specialises in Māori history, the Treaty of Waitangi and early Crown rule in New Zealand. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts, he is a frequent commentator on television and radio. Paul lives with his wife and children in Hobsonville, Auckland.

Publication Date: 5 April 2023 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004235-5 |  RRP $45

Paperback, 240 x 160 mm portrait, 360 pages, b&w