Today the Fulbright Programme is familiar worldwide as a unique means of fostering cultural and educational exchange between the United States and other nations. The Fulbright agreement between the United States and New Zealand governments was signed in 1948 and in the four decades since hundreds of teachers, professors, research scholars, students and others from both countries have benefited from this bi-national arrangement.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Fulbright in New Zealand Joan Druett has drawn on the reminiscences of more than 600 past alumni to write this fascinating and lively account. The book outlines the history of the United States/ New Zealand programme and allows American and New Zealand Fulbrighters to speak for themselves, recounting their experiences, both humorous and serious, in one another's countries.

Fulbright in New Zealand is a special book about a special subject. It will be read with pleasure and interest not just by those involved in the Fulbright Programme but by all who believe that better international understanding can mean a more united world.

Cover Photo: Looking at Mt Cook from Lake Matheson Road. (Communicate New Zealand)

Joan Druett, who was born and raised in New Zealand, is a graduate of Victoria College of the University of New Zealand and Christchurch Teacher's College. She has lived and travelled in many parts of the world, including North and South Aumerica, Europe, the Middle East, mainland China and South-East Asia. Her husband Ron, an Englishman, is a souvenir of one of these jaunts. They live in Hamilton, New Zealand, and have two sons.

Joan gave up teaching in 1984 to write fulltime. Exotic Intruders, her account of the acclimatisation of plants and animals in New Zealand (Heinemann, 1983) won the PEN and Hubert Church Awards for Best First Book of Prose in 1984.

In 1986 a Fulbright Writer's Fellowship made it possible for her to travel to the Hawaiian Islands and New England to study whaling history at the great American whaling museums. Since then she has published several articles on the topic of women on whaleships in the Pacific in the nineteenth century. Subsequently she has extended this research to the whaling museums and libraries of Tasmania and New South Wales, Australia. She is still working on Petticoat Whalers, the full-length account of the whaling women, which utilises this extensive material. Her novel Abigail, will be published simultaneously in New York, London and Aukland at the end of 1988. Photo: Rod Wright.

ISBN 0 473 00602 2