New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

Jarrod Gilbert is very lucky that he comes from a country the size of New Zealand. With only 4 million people he could carry out a project that would be beyond the abilities of someone from a large nation and beyond the scope of a single book, namely, the history of all the gangs in a country. Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand (Auckland UP, 2013) is, as you will hear in the interview, partly a history of society and politics in New Zealand. Gangs arise from influences of culture and demographics. People form and join gangs for reasons of security and belonging but once in them develop strong in-group behaviours and out-group prejudices. All of this is evident in this book. Jarrod traces the history from the 1950s when the locals copied the Hells Angels through to modern gangs where again the locals are copying American culture and creating imitations of the Bloods and the Crips. It is also interesting to see the responses of government and police in dealing with stereotypes and real criminal activity. I think anyone who reads this book will see familiar practices acted out by the gangs, the authorities and the community. This is a very human story and well worth the read.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

The Atlantic magazine recently asked its readers to name the greatest athlete of all time. The usual suspects were present among the nominees: Jesse Owens, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, Don Bradman. Given that these were readers of The Atlantic, there were some more thoughtful answers as well: Canadian athlete and cancer-research activist Terry Fox, Czech distance runner Emil Zapotek, and Milos of Croton, the six-time wrestling champion of the ancient Olympics. If we put that question to historians Peter Westwick and Peter Neushul, their likely response would be someone who rarely gets a mention on best-athlete lists, but certainly deserves a place: Duke Kahanamoku. A five-time Olympic medalist in swimming, Duke traveled the world to give swimming exhibitions, drawing thousands at each stop. And wherever there was a beach and a break, Duke also demonstrated the sport he had mastered at Waikiki Beach, where he had grown up. The surfing cultures of Southern California and Australia have their origins in visits by Duke Kahanamoku in the early 1910s. In the words of Westwick and Neushul, the Duke was a combination of world-champion swimmer Michael Phelps and world-champion surfer Kelly Slater (both of whom appeared on The Atlantic’s greatest-athlete list). Duke Kahanamoku is one of the main characters in Westwick and Neushul’s book The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing (Crown, 2013). Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton also appear, as do Gidget, Kahuna, and the Beach Boys. But as the sub-title indicates, this is a history that goes beyond the great surfers and the sport’s influence on pop culture. As historians of science and technology, Westwick and Neushul look at the developments that have fueled surfing’s popularity, such as the invention of foam-and-fiberglass boards (easier to manage than Duke’s 16-foot-long wooden boards) and the neoprene wetsuit, which has allowed surfers to enter waters around the world. Westwick and Neushul are also scholars of environmental history, and their history of surfing looks at how beaches have been transformed by developers and engineers. A customary part of a vacation at Waikiki is a surfing lesson. But the shoreline and even the waves that tourists encounter today are completely different from those of the Duke’s childhood. As Peter and Peter argue, the changes that took place on the shore are just as important to the story of this sport as what the surfers accomplished in the water.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

A number of modern sports are credited to a particular 19th-century founder. The inventive work of some of these figures, like basketball’s James Naismith, American football’s Walter Camp, and judo’s Jigoro Kano, is firmly planted in history. But there are others, such as Abner Doubleday and William Webb Ellis, who are certainly historical figures but whose moments of sporting genius are wrapped in legend. And then there is Tom Wills, the man now credited as the primary inventor of Australian rules football. There are statues in Wills’ honor, commemorating his work as a drafter of rules, a player, and an umpire in the mid-19thcentury. But as Greg de Moore discovered when he set out to learn about this distinctly Australian sport, the circumstances of Tom Wills’ life have been largely unknown. To start, Greg learned that Wills had taken his own life, in a horrific manner, by plunging a scissors into his chest. As an academic psychiatrist with a research interest in suicide, he set off to investigate what drove Wills to this act. Starting at its troubled end, Greg went on to research the whole of Wills’ life, producing the first serious biography of this important figure in the history of Australian popular culture: Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport (Allen and Unwin, 2011) The subtitle of Greg’s book is appropriate. Tom Wills was a 19th-century example of the prodigiously gifted, narcissistic, and ultimately self-destructive male athlete. Like Mickey Mantle or George Best, Wills could not maintain a relationship, manage his fortune, or hold a job after he left the field. Nor could he handle his drink. Although his end was shocking and unusual, the downward spiral is familiar to those who follow sports, in any country. At the same time, while this is a story common to all sporting cultures, Tom Wills’ life opens a window to the history of colonial Australia. His life intersected with episodes of violence between white settlers and Aborigines, as well as moments of reconciliation. He took great pride in his English education, yet his father was committed to the idea that Australia distinguish itself as a separate nation. As Greg explains at the start of our interview, the first spark of this project had come when he was living in New York City and wanted to learn what was distinct about his homeland. Certainly, Tom Wills is a representative figure of Australian history. But he also should be viewed as a compelling character of modern sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Despite its focus on education, Sally Ninham‘s recent book, A Cohort of Pioneers: Australian Postgraduate Students and American PostgraduateDegrees, 1949-1964 (Connor Court Publishing, 2011), covers a lot of ground: the waning of Australian-British ties, the rise of Australian identity, post-war Australian-US relations, and much more. The book is also personal: it details her own family’s experiences as young professionals studying in the United States after the Second World War. The discovery of a cache of family letters led her to consider how and why Australians went to study in the United States, and how the experience transformed Australia’s own higher education system and politics in subsequent decades. For the Australian students, American education opened the prospect of an Australia less dependent upon the United Kingdom. For the United States, then fighting the Cold War, Australian students opened the prospect of closer ties to Australia, an important ally. The book, which is built on an impressive body of oral history interviews, personal letters, and memoirs, is both an important cultural document and a very readable intellectual history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies