Co-winner of the inaugural Environmental History Book Prize from the Australian & Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network
Winner of the 2023 Erik Olssen Prize
Winner of the 2022 NZSA (Non-Fiction) Award
Winner of the 2022 Ian Wards Prize
Co-winner of the 2022 Ernest Scott Prize
Selected by the New Zealand Listener as one of the best books of 2021!
Highly Commended in the inaugural Public Environmental History Prize from the Australian & Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network
'This book digs deep to tell complex, fascinating stories. It makes me want to go to these places and not only see but feel the mauri of places that Lucy Mackintosh has represented here in her words.' – Melissa Matutina Williams, author of Panguru and the City: Kāinga Tahi, Kāinga Rua
'A marvellous book that illuminates the stories of these much loved landscapes in new and striking ways. After reading Shifting Grounds you see these places differently, and treasure them all the more.' – Anne Salmond, Distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology, University of Auckland
'In this landmark work, Lucy Mackintosh enriches our understanding of both the continual remaking of place and the inescapable legacies of empire and colonisation.' – Tony Ballantyne, Professor of History, University of Otago
'Shifting Grounds speaks to the thirst for new histories, histories of Aotearoa New Zealand and histories of Auckland, which are scarce. This wonderful book makes place speak.' – Charlotte Macdonald, Professor of History, Victoria University of Wellington
'The cultural landscapes of Tāmaki Makaurau are evidence of the rich human history of the district. Lucy Mackintosh's book brings these places and their stories to light.' – Deidre Brown, Professor of Architecture, University of Auckland
'Shifting Grounds is a model of historical scholarship and a model first book... Multidisciplinary in approach, it is sensitive and nuanced, and – indicative of the richness of method – both analytical and poetic. Far more than a regional history, this is truly a history for our time.' – Martin Fisher and Jonathan West, New Zealand Historical Association
'This Tāmaki Makaurau that more than a million of us call home can seem so very clearly defined that it can be hard to conceive of other ways of seeing this place, other ways of living here. But Shifting Grounds takes us there.' – David Slack, Red-lining Sunday Column
'Drawing on history, mātauranga Māori, archaeology, botany, geography, and material culture, [Mackintosh] finds in these varied landscapes fresh evidence of long human habitation, of cultural displacement,and trauma, and of the importance of place as “a generator of identity”.' – Vaughan Yarwood, New Zealand Geographic
'Second is Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, by Lucy Mackintosh. Through my long-standing interest in early Auckland history, especially the diarist Sarah Mathew, I'm reasonably familiar with the period's literature and imagery, but this magnificent landmark book does indeed shift the ground, enriching how we experience and appreciate three key sites: Pukekawa/Auckland Domain, Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill and the Ōtuataua Stonefields at Ihumātao. Bravo!' – Tessa Duder, Canvas
'A New Zealand history book of the finest kind, written in a way that is interesting and informative. [Shifting Grounds] could be read by anyone with an interest in New Zealand history.' – Terry Toner, Radio Southland
'Lucy uses these defining landscapes to illuminate Auckland’s connected past, present, and future. The book is an invitation to learn of this. It informs us of significant locations with rich histories that have been ignored in favour of manufactured colonial narratives. Lucy takes the audience on a journey and allows us to see and explore our city with new perspectives and knowledge of its history.' – Omni Arona, Craccum
'Shifting Grounds is a book that any Aucklander with a desire to deepen their connection to the city’s landscape should read. It will enliven the past and enrich the present and perhaps even shape the future.' – Kennedy Warne, E-Tangata
‘Lucy Mackintosh, a curator at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, starts with the ground “and works upwards and outwards” in this fascinating, deeply researched and handsomely designed hardback, focusing on three sites of complex and revealing histories: Pukekawa/Auckland Domain, Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill and the Ōtuataua Stonefields at Ihumātao near the airport.’ – NZ Listener
'There aren’t many written histories of Tāmaki Makaurau. This one’s a beauty...developed with care and with the support of a wide range of Māori advisers, beautifully designed and illustrated and written with great storytelling flair. It’s a seduction: an invitation to see the city afresh, and enjoy.' – Simon Wilson, NZ Herald
A 'revelatory new history book... In [Shifting Grounds] there's this lovely sense that history is stories not just of what happened on the land but with the land.' – Kennedy Warne, Radio New Zealand
'Shifting Grounds is a history of three places: Pukekawa / Auckland Domain, Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill and the Ōtuataua Stonefields at Ihumātao. Such tight focus is matched by a simple, elegant structure: each place is explored across just two times, mostly of a few decades – ‘narrative moments’, as Lucy Mackintosh calls them.' – Jonathan West, Journal of New Zealand Studies
'Starting with rocks, lava flows, a grassy paddock, the remains of a garden, the site of a cottage, or a monument, the book examines the histories that unfolded in these places and connects them with the broader historical context of the city, the nation and the world.' – New Zealand History
'Lucy Mackintosh’s deep interest in Auckland history began while she was working as a historical and museum consultant for various government agencies. After discovering histories that were vastly different from those she had come across in published works on Auckland, Lucy decided to tell these stories in a new way.' – University of Auckland
'Drawing on geography, archaeology, mātauranga Māori, botany and material culture as well as written sources, Lucy has dug deep, like an archivist, into moments in the histories of three iconic Auckland places – the Ōtuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve at Ihumātao, Pukekawa/Auckland Domain and Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill.' – Tess Redgrave, Ingenio
'With Shifting Grounds, Mackintosh is stripping back the city’s apparent solidity to show us how unstable it all is. This place was made. If Auckland is a city not intended for people, a place for investment capital to appreciate in value and where human life is an afterthought at best, it is because somebody did that. Mackintosh has written a history of Auckland that gestures to other possible histories, other possible Aucklands.' – Emmy Rākete, Newsroom
'Though these stories are often absent from our history books and memorials, they are important, if we are to know, understand and reckon with this city’s past.' – Rob Stock, Stuff
'[Mackintosh's] beautifully laid-out book concentrates on three places in Tāmaki Makaurau: the Ōtuataua Stonefields at Ihumātao, Pukekawa/Auckland Domain and Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill as rich and eloquent examples of “landscapes as archive”. Just as Mackintosh maintains that history is not a dead, static thing, but an ongoing vibration, the book itself is lively.' – Anna Rawhiti-Connell, The Spinoff
'The very best illustrated book of 2021. This is just stupendous, a radical reimagining of the city, told through three sites that “challenge the way these particular places as well as the city and nation are understood,” as the author writes in her Introduction.' – Steve Braunias, Newsroom
'Starting from the ground up, Lucy is charting the relationships between people and place.' – Radio New Zealand
'As Auckland continues to expand, its new roads, runways, factories and houses threaten some of the oldest and richest histories in the land. These histories are alive and present for mana whenua at Ihumātao, but they should also be known by all New Zealanders.' – Lucy Mackintosh, The Guardian
