Auckland Anniversary Day, 30 January

So here is an appropriate recent book: Historic Auckland and Northland is the third in a series of regional pictorial histories commissioned by David Bateman publishers and like the first two, on Gisborne/Hawkes Bay and Otago, consists of a selection of interesting b/w photos which fill most of the page with captions, plus chapter introductions. These ones are mostly from the Auckland Museum, the large building that dominates the Auckland domain, where the compiler is a curator.

Aimed at a general history audience, the compiler has regarded transport as incidental rather than the main focus, but given its importance it is inevitable that it features in quite a few of the approximately 150 pictures, particularly ships and early road vehicles; and even a train: the second photo above shows the narrow gauge industrial line of the Drury Pottery and Fireclay Works with one of the 400+ private industry steam locomotives that were brought to NZ, about which little has been researched and published.

This isn't in-depth history, rather "flick lit" but the printer in China has done a superb reproduction job (which is usually the case, despite what a few people think) and it has been attractively designed.  160 pages in 260 mm square format, hard cover with jacket, $49 from the transpress nz shop.