Latest news with #ADifferentKindofPower
The Spinoff
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending June 6
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 A Different kind Of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) From Oprah to Colbert, Insta reels to #booktok, former prime minister Jacinda Ardern has joined the ranks of hard-working celebrity memoirist who must engage in a hefty and relentless media campaign to shift that stock. Ardern's book and its message of kindness as a governing value for politics is a timely amulet for global market in a fraught political environment: publishers have banked on the fact that readers will snatch up her story to wave in the face of rising fascism, inequality and xenophobia. But what does the memoir genre really offer a former politician? The best memoirs are exposing, probing, and lend their readers a way to interrogate their own life decisions through the lens of another. The Spinoff's editor Mad Chapman reviewed A Different Kind of Power and addressed the tightrope that Ardern's attempt was always going to have to tread: 'I figured A Different Kind of Power would either veer political and therefore be cloaked in Ardern's usual restraint as a prime minister or it would veer celebrity and reveal the full emotion and drama behind the politician while conveniently brushing over policy and legacy,' wrote Chapman. 'Somehow it did neither.' 2 Air by John Boyne (Doubleday, $35) The final in Boyne's bestselling elements quartet. 3 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) The 2025 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction winner. Wilkins' novel is the story of Mary and Pete, their great loves, their great losses. Beautiful, funny, and somehow both complex and refreshing like a walk through the New Zealand bush. 4 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) The poetic Booker Prize winner of 2024. 5 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) 'With James, Everett goes back to Twain's novel on a rescue mission to restore Jim's humanity. He reconceives the novel and its world, trying to reconcile the characters and the plot with what now seems obvious to us about the institution of slavery. The result is funny, entertaining and deeply thought-provoking – part critique and part celebration of the original.' Read more of Marcel Theroux's review of James on The Guardian, here. 6 Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown & Ngarino Ellis with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Auckland University Press, $100) The winner of the illustrated nonfiction category in this year's Ockhams and a major publication for Aotearoa for a long time to come. 7 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35) Hugely popular novel that is, curiously, not particularly popular in Yuzuki's home country of Japan. 8 Murriyang: Song of Time by Stan Grant (Simon and Schuster, $47) Here's the publisher's blurb for beloved Australian journalist and broadcaster, Stan Grant's latest book: 'Murriyang, in part Grant's response to the Voice referendum, eschews politics for love. In this gorgeous, grace-filled book, he zooms out to reflect on the biggest questions, ranging across the history, literature, theology, music and art that has shaped him. Setting aside anger for kindness, he reaches past the secular to the sacred and transcendent. Informed by spiritual thinkers from around the world, Murriyang is a Wiradjuri prayer in one long uninterrupted breath, challenging Western notions of linear time in favour of a time beyond time – the Dreaming. Murriyang is also very personal, each meditation interleaved with a memory of Grant's father, a Wiradjuri cultural leader. It asks how any of us can say goodbye to those we love.' 9 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Random House, $38) Here's a lively snippet from Andrea Long Chu's review of Vuong's second novel: 'It is a sweet, charming, conventional novel whose ambition does not outstrip its ability. The young Hai is a suicidal college dropout stuck in the economically depressed but whimsically named town of East Gladness, Connecticut. 'If you aim for Gladness and miss, you'll find us,' the narrator says before directing our attention to Hai, who is about to jump off a bridge. But before he takes the plunge, the boy is flagged down by Grazina, a zany Lithuanian immigrant with dementia. Still unable to face his mother, who believes he is off at medical school, Hai moves in with Grazina, effectively becoming her live-in nurse, and seeks employment at the local HomeMarket (a thinly disguised Boston Market). Hai's co-workers are quirky, Wes Anderson–esque eccentrics who prove just as batty as Grazina: the manager, an amateur pro wrestler; the cashier, a Hollow Earther; Hai's cousin Sony, an autistic Civil War buff in denial about his father's death. Yet the delusions of others, instead of isolating Hai, end up pulling him out of his grief and into a provisional world of shared experience that, at least for a while, makes life worth living. What a pleasure to be given characters and a plot!' 10 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) Sinister and magnificent. Catherine Chidgey's latest novel is an absorbing, gripping alternate history. Read The Spinoff's review, right here. WELLINGTON 1 A Different Kind Of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) 2 The Midnight Plane: New and Selected Poems by Dame Fiona Kidman (Otago University Press, $40) A gorgeous new collection of Kidman's poetry beautifully published in hardback and with an arresting cover image taken from the documentary about Kidman that premiered last year and was reviewed by The Spinoff, here. 3 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 4 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) Haymitch's time to shine in The Hunger Games. 5 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 6 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) 7 Māori Made Easy: Workbook Kete 1 by Scotty Morrison (Penguin, $25) The indomitable Scotty Morrison is back with another brilliant aid for learning te reo Māori. 8 Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson (Profile Books, $55) Klein and Thompson's highly anticipated roadmap for fixing housing, healthcare, infrastructure and innovation. 9 Slowing the Sun | Essays by Nadine Hura (Bridget Williams Books, $40) A stunning series of essays. Here's the publisher's blurb: 'Overwhelmed by the complexity of climate change, Nadine Hura sets out to find a language that connects more deeply with the environmental crisis. But what begins as a journalistic quest to understand the science takes an abrupt and introspective turn following the death of her brother. In the midst of grief, Hura works through science, pūrākau, poetry and back again. Seeking to understand climate change in relation to whenua and people, she asks: how should we respond to what has been lost? Her many-sided essays explore environmental degradation, social disconnection and Indigenous reclamation, insisting that any meaningful response must be grounded in Te Tiriti and anti-colonialism. Slowing the Sun is a karanga to those who have passed on, as well as to the living, to hold on to ancestral knowledge for future generations.' 10 Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin, $65) Wonderful to see that Aotearoa poet Hana Pera Aoake wrote about rivers from a te ao Māori perspective for The Serpentine gallery in London. Widely beloved nature writer Macfarlane comes at rivers from a very different perspective in this latest, already bestselling book.
Kiwiblog
a day ago
- Politics
- Kiwiblog
The Telegraph review of the Ardern book
Tim Stanley is a former UK Labour Party candidate, and writer for The Telegraph. He reviews the recent autobiography by Jacinda Ardern: Don't read this book. You won't, anyway: it's by Jacinda Ardern. But if I tell you that it's a memoir dedicated to 'the criers, worriers, and huggers,' you'll have an idea of the nightmare you've dodged. A Different Kind of Power reads like a 350-page transcript of a therapy session: 'My whole short life,' the author writes, 'I had grappled with the idea that I was never quite good enough.' Regrettably, she persisted, rising through the two or three ranks of New Zealand society to become prime minister at the age of 37, from 2017 to 2023. And yet the practicalities of the job don't interest her: this book hinges on how everything felt . A fairly brutal introduction. As for what drew her into politics: was it Marx? Or Mahatma Gandhi? Well, one influence came early on: she saw a newspaper cartoon of a Tory stealing soup from children and thought, 'that definitely didn't feel right.' Few people know this, but this is factually correct. In the 1990s, teams of Young Nationals roved the nation breaking into the homes of poor people, and stealing soup from them. she wants us to know, too, that she replied to every child who wrote to her As did John Key, just that he didn't feel the need to tell everyone about it. By contrast, the anti-lockdown crowd Ardern describes protesting outside New Zealand's Parliament, wore 'literal tinfoil hats', flew 'swastikas' and 'Trump flags'. This is exactly how centrist dads (and mums) subtly vilify their opponents: set a perfect example and imply a comparison. I am so kind that anyone who disagrees with me must be nasty; so reasonable that my critics must be nuts. There were a few fringe figures there, but the vast majority were just people angry that they had lost their jobs on the basis of vaccine mandates that turned out to be based on an incorrect assumption that they would stop transmission. A poll of around a third of the protesters done by Curia staff found that 27% of the protesters were Maori (so unlikely to be Nazis!) and 40% of the protesters voted for Labour, Greens or Te Pati Maori in 2020. Post-office, Ardern became a fellow at Harvard University, teaching a course in… you guessed it: 'empathetic leadership'. The principle that the world would be a better place if we just empathised with each other is nice in theory, but codswallop in practice. How does that work with Vladimir Putin or the boys in Hamas? On the contrary, true leadership is about making tough judgments, guided by sound philosophy: St Jacinda bungled the former, lacked the latter. By reducing all government to thoughts and prayers, she transformed humility into vanity – a softly photographed carnival of her own emotions. Ouch, and a final jab: But there is one wonderful moment of zen. It comes when Ardern meets the late Queen in 2018, and asks whether she has any advice on raising children. 'You just get on with it,' said the monarch. It must have been a put-down; it sounds like a put-down – and yet Ardern is too naive to notice. The Queen of course became Queen at age 26, and had two children while in office.
Kiwiblog
2 days ago
- Politics
- Kiwiblog
Guest Post: Kindness Above Arithmetic – A Timeless Manual from Jacinda Ardern
Jacinda Ardern has bestowed upon the nation a gift – a memoir as warm as a winter sunrise and just as forgiving of shadows. Every page hums with kindness, the quality that first sent global headlines floating south across the Pacific. What captivates is the considerate restraint. Entire policy battles slip past like polite strangers while budget lines stay unruffled and statistics remain at home. Ardern spares us the burden of numbers – empathy for those who deem arithmetic discourteous. She prefers melody to measurement, and her speeches rippling through these chapters are silky and consoling. Outcomes make only cameo appearances, which feel oddly soothing. Leadership, we learn, is about tone, not toil. That resonance endures. Corridors of Wellington still echo with her gentle cadence while Cabinets yet unborn prepare announcements that glide majestically beyond detail. The belief blooms that spirit alone will close deficit gaps, plant forests and build houses. Any later occupant of the Ninth Floor will draw from this manual. Each may decide that certainty is overrated and that firmness of vision need never be encumbered by measurable plans. In this, the memoir rebadges itself as an evergreen field guide for administrations that prize applause above arithmetic. Ardern's handling of memory is equally elegant. Lockdowns become communal song sessions, quarantine queues a study in national patience. The months when vaccines waited fashionably offshore look like lessons in mindfulness, each omission glowing like a candle left intentionally unlit. Readers hunting for a critique will find none, and therein lies the mischief. Such abundant praise inevitably frames the absent explanations. The kindness is infectious, the selectivity instructive. A Different Kind of Power reminds us that feeling good is half the battle and often the whole campaign. Results may fade, yet moods endure. In celebrating that truth, the memoir offers a compass for every government bold enough to govern by hope alone, secure in the belief that smiles travel further than spreadsheets.
Business Insider
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
10 leadership tips from Jacinda Ardern, the ex-New Zealand prime minister who became a world leader at 37
In 2017, Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand's prime minister at just 37, leading her country through some of its most challenging moments — from a terrorist attack to a pandemic. In her memoir "A Different Kind of Power," she offers a rare glimpse into the personal convictions and leadership style that shaped her political career. Rather than chasing power for its own sake, Ardern writes candidly about leading with empathy, staying grounded in values, and letting purpose outweigh fear. Here are 10 lessons drawn from her book. Say yes before you're ready Ardern never set out to run for office. She loved politics but saw it as a calling for other people — more assertive, more confident, more sure. So when Labor Party officials encouraged her to join the party list ahead of the 2008 election, she hesitated. She was living in London, working as a policy advisor, and becoming a member of New Zealand's Parliament felt far off and improbable. But something shifted: "You've said no so many times. But this time, maybe, you just said yes." Let purpose be bigger than fear While volunteering for the Labor Party and working as a researcher for New Zealand's former Prime Minister Helen Clark in 2001, the idea of becoming a member of Parliament briefly crossed her mind. It didn't seem practical — she doubted whether politics could ever be a real job for someone like her. "What would it be like? To not just help people one-on-one — by being a good community member and volunteer, as I'd seen my mum do for her whole life — but to also have a vote and a voice in the place that set and changed the rules. "What would it be like, I wondered, to be an MP?" Leadership is service, not status For Ardern, politics was never about prestige. Her early campaign work taught her that political change isn't about optics — it's about impact. "An election wasn't just something that was battled out on a television screen. It wasn't about phone calls or pages of an Excel spreadsheet. It was about real things that happened to real people." Empathy is not weakness — it's power Mocked and jeered in Parliament as a young MP, Ardern wondered if she was "too thin-skinned for politics." A party veteran urged her not to change. "Promise me you won't try to toughen up, Jacinda. You feel things because you have empathy and because you care. The moment you change that is the moment you'll stop being good at your job." The traits you think disqualify you may be what make you a great leader Jacinda Ardern often felt she didn't fit the mold of a traditional politician — too anxious, too empathetic, too filled with self-doubt. But over time, she learned to see those traits as assets, not liabilities. "If you have impostor syndrome or question yourself, channel that. It will help you. You will read more, seek out advice, and humble yourself to situations that require humility to be conquered. "If you're anxious, and overthink everything, if you can imagine the worst-case scenario always, channel that too. It will mean you are ready when the most challenging days arrive. "And if you are thin-skinned and sensitive, if criticism cuts you in two, that is not weakness, it's empathy. "In fact, all of the traits that you believe are flaws will come to be your strengths. They will give you a different kind of power, and make you a leader that this world, with all its turmoil, might just need." Good leadership is good listening As a volunteer phone banking at 18, Ardern had to call through a dated Labor Party spreadsheet to recruit volunteers. Most people hung up. Some were hostile. But she got better — not by pushing harder, but by listening closely. "With each, I listened to how people answered, and tried to start a conversation. 'How do you think things will go at the election? What do you think might swing things?'" You don't need to be the loudest to lead During her years in opposition, Ardern was often told — explicitly and implicitly — that she wasn't "tough" enough for politics. She wasn't confrontational, didn't dominate debates, and didn't attack for the sake of scoring points. Commentators called her "vapid," "pretty bloody stupid," or a "show pony." But Ardern never embraced the shouty, aggressive archetype of leadership. "I would never be that kind of leader, and I didn't want to try. If the only way to put runs on the board in opposition was attacking and tearing people down, then maybe I was mediocre. "I didn't want to choose between being a good politician and being what I considered a good person. So I settled into the criticism." Let your values challenge your tribe Raised Mormon, Ardern supported civil unions and the decriminalization of sex work — even though her church opposed both. "Did my political decision differ from that of the Mormon church? Absolutely. But yet again, I ignored the clash of values, instead filing it away in the same metaphorical box where I put all the other things I couldn't square." Failure doesn't mean stop; it means grow In her third attempt at winning a parliamentary seat — this time in her hometown of Morrinsville — Ardern lost again. Labor's national result was its worst in nearly a century, and she returned to Parliament only via the party list. Despite campaign losses, she still kept going. "I cried myself to sleep. Then I went back to work." Know when to step back — even from the top Leadership took a toll on Ardern, physically and emotionally. In her memoir, she reveals that a cancer scare — a false alarm — was a wake-up call. The relentless pressure of leadership was beginning to affect her health, patience, and perspective. "I knew the next challenge, whatever it was, lay just around the corner. And when it came, I would need a full tank, more than enough in reserves. And I wasn't sure I had that anymore. It was time to say aloud what, until then, had been a thought in my head alone."
1News
3 days ago
- Business
- 1News
Ardern takes swipe at Cunliffe over 'tokenistic' comment in new memoir
Jacinda Ardern singles out David Cunliffe, one of her predecessors as Labour leader, for criticism in her new memoir, describing an incident where he apparently suggested giving her a high position in the party list would be seen as "tokenistic". The exchange represents a rare public disagreement between two former leaders and amounts to an unusual moment of political candour from Ardern. She also recounts feeling relief when Cunliffe stepped down as leader after a crushing election loss for Labour in 2014, writing: "For the first time in a long while, I felt relieved." And she also wrote in her book, A Different Kind of Power, about questioning Cunliffe's authenticity and loyalty to the party. Party list ADVERTISEMENT Ardern describes a tense private exchange where Cunliffe allegedly told her he was considering her for the party's number three list position but was worried about whether it might appear "tokenistic". According to Ardern's account, Cunliffe called her to his office after becoming leader in 2013 to discuss the party's front bench positions. "I'd like to have a woman in my No. 3 spot," Cunliffe allegedly told her, before adding: "I've considered you for this spot. But I'm worried about that looking... well... tokenistic." Ardern writes she then refused to make a case for why she deserved the position: "'You either think that or you don't. I either deserve to be No. 3 or I don't. You need to decide." Ultimately she was not named at number 3 in the list, and nor was any other woman MP. Cunliffe responded to the claims in the book with a brief statement. ADVERTISEMENT "Jacinda did not raise any issues with me at the time and has not done so since," he said. "I have quite a different recollection of events." Ardern recounts volatile time for Labour The cover of A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir, set to be released on June 3, 2025. (Source: Penguin Random House/Supplied) Ardern also described her reaction to Cunliffe's infamous apology for being a man at a Women's Refuge event, writing: "I found myself holding my breath whenever he spoke." In contrast to her criticism of Cunliffe, Ardern speaks warmly of her relationship with Grant Robertson, who would later become her finance minister and deputy while PM, describing him as someone who would have been "an outstanding prime minister." She details how she supported Robertson's leadership bid, which included running against Cunliffe, and later formed a "Gracinda" ticket with him in a subsequent bid. 'My intent, never in writing this, was to ever malign' ADVERTISEMENT Ardern was asked about her candid writing regarding Cunliffe in an RNZ interview yesterday. "With any character in the book, for the most part, I've just tried to write experiences so without giving too much commentary on anyone as an individual person," she responded. "There were a few moments that were perhaps a little bit formative in my career, where I was struggling with this question of whether or not I was viewed tokenistically. The former Prime Minister was asked by Seven Sharp's Hilary Barry whether she could return to New Zealand without being given a hard time. (Source: Seven Sharp) "And the story that I shared came up through the course of those events. To not share it would have been a very deliberate edit, a deliberate exclusion of something that really did stand out in my mind. It wasn't just about the person. It was about the moment." The former prime minister said: "A lot of the things that are in there are also a reflection of that period in opposition, which was pretty tough for us, it is fair to say." ADVERTISEMENT "My intent never, in writing this, was to ever malign, but just to share an experience." 'The red wedding' Cunliffe, who now helps run a consultancy firm, has largely stayed out of the public eye since his time as a Cabinet minister and stint as Labour leader though he sometimes appears as a political pundit. He took over the leadership in 2013 following a divisive contest but stepped down after the 2014 election defeat. Ardern described the party's turbulence in detail, comparing the aftermath of Phil Goff's election loss to "the red wedding in Game of Thrones". Then-prime minister John Key and David Cunliffe go head to head at the TVNZ leader's debate on September 17, 2014 (Source: TVNZ) The leadership period was marked by internal party tensions, with factions emerging within the Labour caucus, including an "Anyone-But-Cunliffe" grouping. Years later, just weeks before the 2017 election, Ardern went on to become Labour leader and subsequently became PM in a coalition with NZ First and the Greens before winning with a landslide in 2020. When asked yesterday if she remained in contact with Cunliffe, Ardern said no. But she added that if she saw him, she would still stop and chat to him. "Not everyone do I have regular exchanges with," she said.
