On This Day in New Zealand, by Ron Palenski

Books about New Zealand heritage come out all year, every year, in a seemingly never-ending flow these days. Most, sadly, are generics. They reprint the same stuff previously published elsewhere, adding simply photos taken more recently (perhaps), a bit of rearranging here, surmising there ...

Most I don't buy. My money tends to go on books which I'll use as reference material, either for work, historical society stuff, or Timespanner.

But this one, Ron Palenski's On This Day in New Zealand, has me hooked. It's a book which I'm picking up from time to time, browsing through, thinking, "Hey, that's something new!" then putting down again. A good day-by-day history, complete with a fairly good index (great for the reference side of the deal), and reasonably priced to boot, I'd recommend this as a buy for yourself, as a gift for someone you know likes light NZ  history in easily digestible chunks -- and as an addition to the burgeoning reference collection.

As an aside, this post marks number 1000 for the Timespanner blog, just a couple of weeks shy of the second anniversary. Thank you, all -- the followers, the readers, the contributors, my friends who patiently listen to my rabbitings, the staff at various archives, libraries, museums and fellow local historians who have all kept this going. It's been great fun so far. Cheers.