At once a travel book, autobiographical novel and free-style historical survey, "News of the Swimmer Reaches the Shore" begins with its narrator suspended in the salty, buoyant waters of the Mediterranean. Not only is the book a paean to the south of France, it is a history of things that explode under water, taking the reader by way of the trenches of World War One and the Rainbow Warrior bombing to the writer's experiences of diving off Menton. Adrift on an ocean of art history, literature and music, the book introduces a cast of underwater characters including Jacques Cousteau, Dominique Prieur, Henri Matisse and the naked river-swimming Mother Aubert, a 19th century nun who presents something of a role-model for the narrator as he negotiates various streams of thought.

"Days Beside Water" is an ideal introduction to the poetry of Gregory O'Brien, one of the best younger writers (and artists) of New Zealand. The poems are set where sea, land and sky, past, present and future, meet in different lights and moods. There are lyrics, comic interludes, an imagined account of the marriage of Samuel Marsden, the 19th-century missioner. The theme of spiritual marriage - a union of clements in imaginary or historical contexts - recurs in two sequences: an invented life of the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, and "The Milk Horse", about a foundling and the Mother Superior of an orphanage. The poems capture the permanent value in moments and emotions, chiefly love. O'Brien's involvement with the graphic arts and add richness to his imagery.

Every spring on Gregory O'Brien's front lawn, on a ridgetop in Hataitai, an upside-down dinghy blooms with flowering clematis. In this book, O'Brien takes his metaphorical dinghy to the edges of New Zealand - starting with a road trip through Northland and then voyaging out into the Pacific, to lead us into some under-explored territories of the South Pacific imagination. With creative spirits such as Janet Frame, Ralph Hotere, Robin White, John Pule and Epeli Hau`ofa as touchstones, O'Brien suggests how we New Zealanders might be re-imagining ourselves as an oceanic people on a small island in a big piece of water. Always Song in the Water is a book of encounters, sightings and unexpected epiphanies. It is a high-spirited, personal and inventive account of being alive at the outer extremities of Aotearoa New Zealand. `This is my field notebook, my voyaging logbook,' Gregory O'Brien writes, `this is my Schubert played on a barrel organ, my whale survey, my songbook.' Among the many artists whose work is featured are John Pule, Robin White, Phil Dadson, Fiona Hall, Euan Macleod, Laurence Aberhart and the Sydney-based painter Noel McKenna, who produced numerous works specifically for this book.

It has long been recognized that people with identifiable congenital causes of developmental disabilities display peculiar patterns of behavior and temperament. An explosion of new information in the field of so-called behavioral genetics has precipitated a need for a book describing behaviorial phenotypes. The book consists of three parts: Part I opens with an account of the evolution of behaviorial genetics in developmental disability. The second part covers measurement and research methodology and includes chapters on various types of self-injurious behavior that occur in different phenotypes and a chapter on Fragile X--a model for inquiry into behavioral phenotypes. The sections on genetic analysis are particularly useful to clinicians who are unfamiliar with contemporary genetic techniques. Part III summarizes behavioral phenotypes of over thirty biologically distinct conditions.

This important treatise reviews the latest clinical models for working with developmental disability and behavioral problems. In the first section contributions explore the causes and nature of behavior problems among people with physical, learning, language, and sensory disabilities, and such specific conditions as epilepsy and acquired brain damage, while those in the second section describe the assessment approaches for evaluating these behaviors. The third section covers treatment strategies emphasizing the importance of an eclectic approach. The contributors, all acknowledged experts in their fields of pediatrics, psychology, and psychiatry, provide a comprehensive overview of this set of major challenges, indicating the importance of auditory detection, understanding, measurement, and treatment.

Our mother's clouds and insects fly to embrace your clouds and insects. Her architecture, roads, bridges and infrastructure rush to greet yours. Her molecules on their upward trajectory entwine with yours, the colour of her eyes, hair and skin. Her language, with its past participles, figures of speech, the sounds and tremors which are its flesh and bones these words go out to greet your words and to greet you - these words which will never leave her. House & Contents is a moving meditation on earthquakes and uncertainties, parents and hats, through Gregory O'Brien's remarkable poetry and paintings.

This is the story of a micronaut. Artist, designer and illustrator Graham Percy travelled far and built a career on the closely observed detail. Born in Taranaki in 1938, Percy spent apprentice years in Auckland before moving to London, where with his photographer-partner Mari Mahr he created a workshop-home, a microcosm of the outside world. Here fellow-venturer Gregory O’Brien presents an account of Graham Percy’s life and art, by way of motorbike and hot-air balloon, through sketches and bookshelves, touching on childhood losses and adult nostalgia. Including some of Percy’s most compelling drawings, A Micronaut in the Wide World showcases his early design work, vivid children’s book illustration and thriving mature art. The drawings reveal Percy’s passion for the small and hand-drawn; convey quirky remembered and imagined histories; and feature a cast of curious characters, from storks and trainee running targets to Commedia dell’Arte characters and illustrious composers. In its vivid, exuberant detail — alphabets and elephants, red lettuces and homesick kiwi, the Hungarian navy and the starry skies of the southern hemisphere — A Micronaut in the Wide World is a stimulating rediscovery of a remarkable artist.