Non-fiction

One feels one should be a little careful about penning a review, even (especially?) a warm one, of a book about Edward Snowden.

MAD*, a Cold War era acronym, aptly sums up the content of Command and Control.

P.J. O'Rourke is a prolific US author who seems to revel in aphorisms, if you trawl through quotations by him that abound. In this book there are plenty of new ones.

Of all the books I have read recently about the effects of humankind on the natural environment, this is the clearest, easiest to read and in many ways the most concerning.

This is a history of interactions between people and dolphins in New Zealand, beginning with the appearance of Pelorus Jack in the late 19th century.

Edmund White is an extremely ''out'' gay American novelist, essayist, biographer and teacher, who has rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous ever since his autobiographical third novel, A Boy's Own Story, published in 1982, caused a minor sensation.

Lighthouses by the very nature of their function were most often built at spectacular and wild locations.

Paul Vallely is a freelance journalist who has also worked for a number of major newspapers.

Charlene Smith needs little introduction in media circles around the world.

David (Da-VEED) Menasche was only 34 when he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and told he had months to live.

I have been interested in the responses to a question on what might be the favourite summer reread of people interviewed in the ODT's Summer Times pages.

There's nothing like television or movie exposure to pull visitors to a stately home and so it is with England's Highclere Castle, where the ITV drama Downton Abbey is filmed. 

The imminent approach of the centennial of the Gallipoli landings in 1915 has already produced a raft of new histories and analyses of the campaign.

Just the right size to slip into a (generous) top pocket, Ulva Island: A Visitor's Guide is a tremendous advertisement for this bird sanctuary tucked into Patersons Inlet at Stewart Island.

James Cook is probably the world's greatest navigator.

World War 1 saw the killing of more than a million British and Empire soldiers, sailors and aviators. Their graves lie scattered across the battlefields of the Western Front, Palestine, Mesopotamia, east Africa, Greece and Italy.

If the word ''memoir'' conjures up an image of a short kiss-and-tell tale, Reform may surprise you. Eight hundred closely typeset pages long, Sir Geoffrey Palmer's book is no quickie read.

Surely there is nothing new left to say about the factors that combined to make the United States of America what it is today?

This is an unusual cricket biography in that (a) it is written by a grandmother-grandson combination, and (b) it is only really half about Tony Greig, the South African turned English captain turned Australian commentator.

There are great tennis players, and then there is Rod Laver.