This book is primarily a photographic history. I don't want to call it a coffee table book, because the history that it documents is crucially important to my country, and my feeling is that a coffee table book is primarily decorative. That being said, the ratio of photographs to text here is in line with what you might expect from a coffee table book, so the comparison does hold some (limited) water. There's a lot of photos here, is what I'm saying... and they're fascinating.

Harris' text is also very interesting. She's trying to summarise forty years of protest, from different parties and with different goals, over a wide range of issues, so that text is not as in-depth as you would expect from a more typical history. As I read through it I kept thinking that I wanted more text, more explanation and history, but that is an unfair expectation given the format of the book. Honestly, she's balanced word and image extremely well here, and interested readers such as myself can always go find other books for more information. It would have been interesting to have small excerpts and memories of the various protests from the subjects of some of these photos, but again, that might have been beyond the scope of this project. Nonetheless, it's a very compelling record, being both informative and sympathetic - and it's got me interested in learning more NZ history, so that's something.