TE RANGI HIROA
The life of Sir Peter Buck

J.B. CONDILIFFE

A remarkable career

Lavishly gifted by nature, Peter Buck was soon to overcome his humble origins, becoming one of the first Maori doctors. He pioneered medicine and sanitation among the Maori people, and became a Minister in the last Liberal Government. Enlisting as medical officer with the Maori Contingent, he was awarded the D.S.O., and demobilised with the rank of Lieutenant-Conlonel.

Peter Buck joined the Bishop Museum at the age of 50, later becoming its most famous director, a world-famous ethnologist and statesman for the Polynesian people. Displaying phenomenal energy both as administrator and research worker, he was the author of many scientific monographs. His two more popular books. Vikings of the Sunrise and The Coming of the Maori have become classics.

The biography tells for the first time the full life story of one of New Zealand's most distinguished sons. Peter Buck inherited the charm, charisma, dignity and humour of the Maori, and the dedication, resourcefulness and scientific approach of the European. The full flowering of his genius was not to come, however, till when after a distinguished career in New Zealand, he joined the Bishop Museum, Honolulu. This lovingly written biography by one of his oldest friends provides a wealth of background information and anecdote to his life. Though Peter Buck's achievements are revealed on every page, the man himself shines out in the course of a wonderfully rich life story. Appendices by the late Eric Ramsden cover his family background and give an account of his ethnological researches in Mangareva.

The author

Professor J. B. Condliffe, himself an economist of international standing, met Peter Buck in the trenches in Flanders. This acquaintance ripened into close friendship in Honolulu and later when they were colleagues at Yale.

On his retirement from the University of California in 1958, Professor Condliffe joined the Stanford Research Institute, becoming its senior economist. He has continued to work on projects for governments and industrial corporations.

314 pages of text; 24 pages of photographs

$9.95

From all booksellers and the publishers

a Whitcombes publication