"I'm writing a book." "Oh, how can I help?"

So I've been writing a book, as some of you know — a book about the history of this place.

And if you're keen, you can help me to finish it. Because these things take time. And so far it's taken many hours and produced about 300,000 words (and counting), and it needs to be rounded up and herded home. And I need to pay for the time to do that properly.

The working title for the book had been A Politically Incorrect History of New Zealand: The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Something More Like the Truth. A well-reasoned, well-documented, vigorous pushback against some of the more mouthy myths that divide this place.

Or maybe: A Positive History of Aotearoa: The First Five Million. A clear-eyed sort of celebration of the prosperous little place we five-million-or-so get to enjoy, despite our divisions, and how it got to be that way.

The writing does both of those things, but that title still has to be nailed down —and the cover too. You can help with that as well. (And get yourself a T-shirt or mug featuring the finished layout.)

I'm asking for donations to help me complete the book and to pull all the writing together — and donors will get themselves a few special favours, like meet-ups and chats and reading groups, and helping to choose that title. And, of course (if you're on the right donor level!), an autographed copy of the finished book itself.

Why another History of New Zealand? 

Because the last half-decent general history of New Zealand was published 20 years ago — and there are so few other history prospects on the horizon that the publisher is re-issuing it (this time as a history of Aotearoa New Zealand). 

Because no general history of this place is sufficiently satisfying, or up to date. 

And because too little of the history writing here is sufficiently focussed on those building the place, rather than those who've been tearing it down. What emerges too often, observes historian Ian Hunter, is not a history of New Zealand per se; but a history of some Māori and far too much politics. "Michael King’s popular ‘Penguin History of New Zealand,’" for example, "devotes just nine pages of the first 300 to discussion of New Zealand’s economic development." Is that really enough?

“When I was growing up," said Thomas Sowell, "we were taught the stories of people whose inventions and scientific discoveries had expanded the lives of millions of other people. Today, students are being taught to admire those who complain, denounce and demand.” Is that really good enough?

There are many more stories to tell than students are hearing. If New Zealand history is to be taught in schools, then those other stories need to be told. Urgently. 

Why A Politically Incorrect History? 

Because a good history needs to speak without fear or favour. So if it needs saying, I will say it. 

 
I aim to challenge you on every page with history you haven't heard, or have heard but never analysed this way.

You should have got a taste of that in my long-form review of The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi. New ideas and new thinking, powerful and rigorous, challenging even our better-known stories from the past. I promise more of that in this book.

Why do you need help to finish the book?

Writing a book like this takes research, ideas and hard work. You can still do all that, as I have been, while doing a day job. But finishing a book like this is different— tying it all together properly and effectively takes quiet time, and uninterrupted days or weeks. It needs some time without all the pressures of a day job. 

Your help will allow me to complete the writing, and publish and distribute the book.

So who the hell am I, and why  should you care?

If you're reading this now, you're here because you (or someone who's linked you up) has liked something I've written, and wanted to hear more. This will help me do that.

In my day job, I'm a humble house designer. In my spare time, I write — and read, to fuel all that writing. 

 I've written for many years, appearing in places like the NZ Herald and Newsroom, I've written chapters in several best-selling books, written for edited a magazine called The Free Radical, and for the last twenty years I've run a daily local blog called Not PC — which over the years has attracted a total of 1,4088,800 visitors! (That's around 30-50,000 every month.)

Not everyone agrees with all I write, but they do come back regularly to be challenged. And that's what a good blog should do. 

 And that's what a good history should do too. 

Too many have a too-partial  knowledge of New Zealand history. That needs to change.

Because this is nothing like those other general histories, which despite their length have failed even to tell the full story of the past. Instead, like listening to a book-length Morning Report, we hear a very thorough but extremely narrow view of our place, much of it “occluded," as a reviewer once said of another local history book "by the partial history of New Zealand biculturalism.”

One of the biggest differences in my account is focusing less on grounds for grievance, and more on the reasons for our prosperity. Every place has headwinds resisting the forces of progress, and tailwinds pushing progress forward. The history of every place should recount the tales of this ongoing "battle between headwinds and tailwinds” — and why the tailwinds are still winning. 

So less about the fall and rise of dusty political dynasties, and more about what motivated New Zealand’s founders, movers and shakers, what ideas guided their actions, and what they managed to achieve, and will achieve still.

"Ideas have consequences." So let's see what ideas were most consequential here. 

No, it won't be one of the litany of one-sided general histories as if the only thing that happened in two-hundred years here is the rise of political correctness, and the fall of political players. We've read too much “political history, Māori history, social history, class history, and the history of identity,”… but too little that we could call a full history of this place. That's what this history will aim to give you.

If this brief outline and that XXNewsroomXX review have given you a taste, then this draft Preface for the book will, I hope, make you hungry for more.

Help me to complete the book, and to tie it all together.