Oceania Books

The Cowboy is Krentz's finest. It is my first audio book and I liked it so much I bought several more. That say's it all.

I suppose this is meant to tickle the ladies? fancies.
The Pirate, Jared Hawthorne is diffinately the alpha male with a son, David who decides to become a matchmaker.
Jared is widowed but [maybe] looking for a wife. The Colonel is willing to lay a bet on it.

Katherine Inskip is a stress out divorced romance writer who is sent to Amethyst Island by her friends Margaret Lark and Sarah Fleetwood. Sarah just has a feeling about the Island.
Kate is definitely agravating, definitely loose, and nosey.

There is a lot of sass with Kate unwinding and a tittilating attraction with the owner of the Island. The inevitable seduction is a bit run of the mill, the info about the founding Pirate and his kidnapped bride fits into the plot nicely and a slight mystery with his castle was a bit of a chuckle.

The villians were a bit wishy, washy but necessary. There proved to be no privacy on the Island and interesting stories flew faster than a telegraph line.

Thoroughly enjoyable read - quick and easy just like Kate.
Recommended --M

Katherine Inskip's ideal man didn't exist in this century. Nevertheless, her dreams and the books she wrote were dominated by a swashbuckling pirate. She'd never imagined she'd encounter him in the flesh... until she met Jared Hawthorne.

Owner of the South Seas island where Kate was unwinding, Jared could have stepped off the pages of a historical romance. In almost every way was her perfect fantasy - bold, dashing, domineering... But when Kate began to suspect that Jared had something more in common with his piratical ancestors - something that wasn't all 'by the book...'

1st in trilogy.

A little predictable but fun. Kate's behavior was childish at times. There was lots of passion. The Pirate is a decent read.

"The Pirate" (book one of three, followed by "The Adventurer" and "The Cowboy") is a great short story. It was hilarious and witty, Krentz at her best.

The only thing some readers might find exasperating is that this is an older Krentz book, so the hero was a little too alpha male at times. There were a couple of scenes in the book where I mentally gritted my teeth at his behavior.

Nevertheless, this entire trilogy is excellent, guaranteed entertainment. Buy them all and read them in order!

Somehow I received and was charged for 2 books. I only wanted 1 book. Any ideas?

An excellent planning guide, especially the tips about school holidays and how to avoid the crowds.

I bought this book primarily because it was the most recent book published. I saw some of the bad reviews and figured it was for older version and decided to try it anyways. What a mistake!
I think the writer just find the most expensive accomodation/restaurant and rated it the highest. I'm sure they're great for $500/night. But I think the point is to find good values that we can't otherwise find ourselves.
There were major mistakes too! I went to a company in Franz Josef and not only they got their prices wrong (keep in mind I went 1 month after the release of this book), they also incorrectly say there's a discount when showing the book.
I think "writing" this book is just a way for the author to try the most expensive things in NZ that she couldn't afford herself otherwise.
Save yourself the weight and try a different book.
Oh yeah, don't rely on this book for maps.

A friend and I had 5 New Zealand travel books between us on our trip. This was the best book by far. We would look at the other books then would always go back to the Frommer's. We ended up using it exclusively by the end of the first week. The information was accurate and easy to follow.

I bought this book because it had a good name behind it, but this guide is lacking what I need, pictures and MAPS! Not a great start to a trip to a country I've never been. After recently browsing a book store I found New Zealand by Insight Guides to be much more sufficient! It is under Discovery Channel so it's legit! Overall this book has been helpful but I think the target audience is older and much better off monetarily than I.

I have travelled to New Zealand many times. When in bookshops I always take a peek in the section they have for NZ, and enjoy travel literature on the topic. Reading a book on one's journey through this country is like taking a mini trip back there again, a place I am very fond of. I've never had a bad experience there. It's a place I have gone alone for months at a time, and a place I have gone with family and friends. This book however, was so negative! He spends most of the story whining about his recently ended relationship, complaining about the weather, and his health problems. He seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder, which results in poor experiences with locals as they don't appreciate his negativity (and sometimes rude demeanor). There are points when he complains about the eco-tourism and the lack of environmentally friendly tourist attractions (jet boats and such), yet fails to have a bigger picture that New Zealand is much more advanced than most countries in limiting this activity thanks to it's citizens voting for preservation and supporting their Department of Conservation. No place is perfect, but in the bigger picture, NZ is far more ahead in this subject than most countries, and I mean MOST. I am saddened that he tends to place himself in situations where he invites negative experiences. Finally, if you are reading this book having little experience in NZ, please keep these things in mind, as it is an amazing place with some of the most kind and interesting people you'll ever meet. Aside from 2-3 tourist towns, which cram the typical stuff down your throat, it's one of few places you can go that is safe and you can get happily lost on a beautiful beach or mountain, all your own.

First off, I loved this book. I have a great desire, if not budget, to see New Zealand. This has only increased my longing to visit this country. Stevenson's writing is very subtle in its humor. I laughed more reading this book than any other travel book I have read before. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in travelling and especially in New Zealand.

Andrew Stevenson has successfully accomplished what very few others are able to do.
He has written a travel guide that is actually enthralling to read. From its pages you will gain a wonderful sense of the flora, fauna and people of "The Land of the White Cloud."
Although the title suggests it to be a book on hiking... it is not. It is a personal account of his time in New Zealand, where he spends 4 months marching through some of the most beautiful places on earth.
The casts of characters that he introduces us to are not "over the top" hard to imagine people, but... simply the everyday folks of New Zealand and the foreigners that are vacationing there too.
I look forward to reading all of Mr. Stevenson's works.
Andrew... if you ever need a hiking buddy... drop me a line!

I found this to be an interesting book. If you want to learn all about New Zealand, its flora and fuana, or great "tramps" (hikes, for you and me), this isn't the book for you. However, it is an enjoyable light read, giving the reader interesting snapshots of life in NZ. Stevenson meets some interesting people along his journey and I found the way in which he shares their stories much more engaging than most of his descriptions of his walks in the woods. Yes, at times the book strains credulity and some of the characters may seem a bit cliche, but I, too, stood in wonder of many of the situations he encounters. Ultimately what comes through is that New Zealand is a land both unlike any other and exactly like home, too.

I very much recommend Andrew Stevenson's "Kiwi Tracks," equally well for those who do and do not know personally New Zealand's natural and cultural landscape and her Great Walks. I myself fall somewhat in between these categories - having explored the South Island only, during some six visits in the last 20 years, always tramping, always in awe.

He tells well how the Great Walks (the term had not existed in my early tramps) have turned from a few persons in lonely huts to nearly hundreds of packed-in campers on solo or guided tours -in just a few short decades. Also his South Island walks were unusually impaired by a massive snow storm and so come across a bit off-putting.

Stevenson gave me the best-yet view of what I have been missing in the North Island ("away from the Mainland," as he quips).

Overall, his book is a beautiful, honest, and detailed travel narrative (thank goodness for someone taking the time to name by name the many fauna and flora experienced). But it is markedly canted by his own ah, delicate emotional state during the journey. The book's dust jacket warns us: "... whatever you have in your rucksack, the heaviest baggage is what you carry inside." Stevenson's emotional center of mass during his trip clearly is located a bit outside himself and he is prone to tip over emotionally during the journey. His honesty about this both hurts and helps the narrative - it does give the reader a reference point: The author is working hard to discover that which is truly important to himself in his journey, as well as puzzling over that same question for New Zealand - the colonist vs. native Maori views of national politics, natural heritage, and future directions.

While relating the pristine and inutterably amazing natural beauty of this land, not the least being the almost inconceivable human innocence and generosity of its citizens, he gives us a tutorial in NZ's basic dilemma. When he asks a fellow tramper to quote the best and worst of his travels: [I paraphrase] "The worst is to see the landscape so corrupted by commercialism so quickly." (You can guess - the bus tours, helicopters, jet boats, egregious mountain re-landscaping.) "The best is that New Zealand is still so unbelievable beautiful." This echoed within me, watching once-quiet towns transformed at the snap of a dollar into teaming Disneylands.

Stevenson shows us, by example(s), of how New Zealand transforms and helps its visitors. A German therapist suggests that tramping holds more value than health insurance premiums. I am inclined to agree.

Of the highest value to me in the book is that Stevenson gives us some great insight into the NZ national values debate (still-ongoing) contrasting (via his hitchhiker's car-cabin testimonies) the views of the progeny of the more recent Western, rough-hewn pioneers against the natural spiritualism of
Maoris, who also gave him rides, and to whom he related more. He shows us that the people of New Zealand must finally listen to the Maori, and strive to preserve their naturalist vision (in the face of adventure bungee-jumping tourism). Between the lines, he shows us that the dialog must go both ways,
especially when facing the World's money, foreign buyers and the touristic denizens of the new millennium.

Although this book smacks of comeuppance in the nature/nurture wars,with Freeman somewhat preditorily showing an excessive ... factor with his prey, it is interesting reading nonetheless, as it shows indirectly the whole dilemma of fieldwork, with its question mark, how observe another culture at all. The account of the genesis of Coming of Age in Samoa is convincing, although the issue of the hoaxing of Mead as to the actual facts of this coming of age remains slightly ambiguous. But the overall account suggests that the entire project was a bit thin in substance, of excessively short duration, and a prime example of prior assumptions influencing results. It is also a story of how our theories end up influencing our present, which is a challenge to our claims on science. The influence of this book on general culture is therefore a considerable irony. I think Freeman is on guard, hence his account stands up fairly well, but I would also check the challengers here, to this, and to the previous work on this subject by the author. In fact, what is the basis for any claim to observe another culture? Not via tourist photography, in any case.

Being a researcher myself, I really appeciate this book by Freeman. Though I know little about anthropology, it is not difficult to be convinced that Mead's work in Samoa was deeply flawed. We all make mistakes. It's just Mead became quite famous, seemly benefiting rather than paying for the mistake. On the hand, I trust that Mead knew the problem in her research at least to some extent and must had suffered from this knowledge.

Margaret Mead's decision to become an antropologist was her belief that a scientist could make a useful contribution to knowledge. In 1924, at the age of 23, she was the youngest participant to go to remote parts of the world where their ways of life were vanishing due to 'modern civilization.' She believed that it was imperative to record those unknown ways of life before they were lost forever and was determined to go to the field as soon as she could. And so she agreed to study adolescent behavior in Samoa, where letters descended on her in intermittent downpours, sometimes 70 or 80 at a time, as they traveled at a slow pace back then.

As a consequence, her 1928 book, COMING OF AGE IN SAMAO, was a bestseller and widely popular with college students of the 1960s. It was full of photos of the natives, mostly undressed (as was their custom). It became the best-selling anthropology book of all time, a classic with her assertion of the sovereignity of culture over biology.

This was a drastic change from Barnard civilization in 1922 to the primitiveness she encountered out in the field. As she wrote in her autobiography, BLACKBERRY WINTER (1972), fifty years later, she did have difficulty learning the language even though she'd "studied" Latin, French and German in high school.

Her research in the South Pacific made her the best-known American anthropologist of the century. In her letters, she had characterized Samoan adolescence similar to the "free love" of the '60s, which she ascribed to 'permissive childrearing' and 'tolerant sexual attitudes.' I'd say it was due to their lack of clothing. She'd thought they had been free from the stress associated with more cultured people.

In an earlier book by this author, MARGARET MEAD AND SAMOA (1983), he tried to prove the opposite of her writings. An Australian professor, who spent years of fieldwork and research there on his own, found the opposite with 'restrictive regulations against premarital sex.' He asserted that she had "poor preparation" for the field (having grown up in a white, upper-middle class background in Philadelphia, PA, with an authoritarian father) and, most likely had been duped by her adolescent informants. Could be, she didn't understand their verbal language and based her scientific 'findings' on their body language.

In this book, he tried to prove (with the help of Ms. Mead's traveling companion of 1926) that one of the most influential anthropological studies of the 20th century was unwittingly based on the mischievous joking of the investigator's informants. He's made a lifelong study of the people of Samoa (maybe he could speak their language fluently?) researching the Margaret Mead Samoan fieldwork of 1925-26 onsite and in the Library of Congress. During all this time,(six years spent in Samoa, 1965-68, and 1981) he spent over 40 years teaching the subject at an Australian University. Could be he's a male chauvinist.

He claims she'd neglected to fully investigate the problem assigned her and relied at the last moment on the tales of two native traveling companions who jokingly 'misled' her about the sexual conduct of Samoan girls. She'd been a precocious American girl who admitted in her biography that she "loved the babies."

Calling her findings a hoax and giving his account of how it (possibly) took place, he puts the blame on her lack of training (and maturity) which 'set her up to be hoaxed.' He waited until after her death to use this means to influence the public that her famous study was based on a hoax.

Calling her 'classic' book a myth, he worked many years in various locations to refute her findings, exploring the history of both anthropology, using Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES as a reference, and biology to bring public awareness of what he calls a 'major 20th century myth.'

He went to the island with a formal traveling party from which the Samoans Margaret Mead studied had migrated, just to prove her wrong. Why was he so determined after 24 years to write a refutation? He went to a lot of trouble to prove this highly respectable woman wrong. His aggressiveness and determination to soil her reputation will backfire, and her most famous book may someday be valuable enough to be an item in the Smithsonian Institution, if is isn't there already.

He certainly traveled around those parts on an officious errand but he's only a teacher of Social Studies (1999). He calls this thesis a 'step toward rethinking the foundations of social science.'

Just as the UT professor who plans to "re-do" James Agee's Pulitzer prize-winning novel A DEATH IN THE FAMILY to include the author's additional handwritten notes and place everything in chronological order, it only makes them look the "fool" to attempt to parody a classic. I told him, "You can't ruin this book."

Now, Freeman has published two books sixteen years apart trying the same thing. I hope he is proven wrong, as you should never change another writer's work -- for any reason. Even if he thinks he is right!

When her hosts in Manu'a learned that `Makelita' had made them world famous as libertines, they were dismayed by what to them was an abominable slander. And they were dumbfounded that, after showing her the utmost hospitality and cooperation, she could have so grossly betrayed them. They hit on the explanation that someone among them fed her a line of bull (tala pepelo lava).

This was a generous if implausible explanation. Generous, because it avoided taxing her with outright fabrication. Implausible, because Mead's depiction of Samoan promiscuity drives whoredom into the core of the social psyche. She claimed that Samoans have no sense of sin despite their regular church attendance and the admonitions of pastors (`They are able to count [sex] at its true value. . . [they recognize] the essential impersonality of sex attraction which we may well envy them']. She reported masturbation, homosexuality, and lesbianism as common practices that were regarded as `simply play' between casual heterosexual liaisons. In other words, Mead's Samoans, like Mead herself, were bisexual. She attributed the relaxed attitude to pre-marital sex and to adultery to the fact that Samoans have no deep attachments or strong emotional feelings. There is no parent-child bonding for the same reason. These and like claims construct the cultural `pattern' of a society untroubled by the storm and stress of adolescence. Such thinking was the trendy utopianism of the sexual reformers of her era, but it had nothing to do with Samoa until Mead's arrival from New York.

Freeman's book is a mighty effort to convert the Samoan belief in duping into a well-founded conclusion. He touts two `smoking guns'. One is the sworn testimony of Mead's dear friend during her field trip, Fa'apu'a Fa'amu, to the effect that she did indeed tell Mead fibs in reply to her questions about her relations with men. The other is correspondence between Mead and the supervisor of her Samoan research, Franz Boas.

The first smoking gun is a dud. Fa'amu testified only that she told Mead that `We spend nights with boys, yes, with boys!' and similar non-specific allusions. There is no express admission that intercourse occurred. There is no hint whatever of lesbianism. The duping hypothesis predicts that Mead's field notes would record the information given her by Fa'amu. In fact, the notes never attribute any information to her. The natural conclusion is that despite the affection, Mead did not regard her friend as an informant. It is improbable, in any case, that Mead credited Fa'amu's tease, partly because her notes show that she was alert to tall tales and partly because Fa'amu's status as a taupou, or ceremonial virgin, meant that she was never unchaperoned and hence had no opportunity for `spending nights with boys'. Finally, Fa'amu's non-specific allusions added nothing to what Mead's notes show she already believed she knew about Samoan promiscuity. In sum, the duping episode is irrelevant to understanding how Mead managed get Samoan moeurs so desperately wrong. Since the second smoking gun depends on the first, it too is a dud.

Did she make it up then? Although he repeatedly defends Mead's research integrity, Freeman destroys his noble defense by cataloguing deceit after deceit in things small and great. Mead indeed seems to have been a gamester who got a buzz from pulling the wool over people's eyes. And this was her reputation among her colleagues, who called her `the lady novelist', a `mythmaker', given to exaggeration and hyperbole, to sloppy and impressionistic description of no great reliability. The eminent Edward Sapir bluntly called her a `pathological liar'.

Freeman shows that Mead's fieldwork was premised on two strategic deceits. She concealed from her hosts her married status. By passing herself off as a virgin, she was honored by three villages with title of taupou, which conferred a great advantage-she had, as she said, `rank to burn' and could `order people about'. She second strategic deceit was perpetrated on her supervisor, Franz Boas and indirectly on her funding sponsor, the National Research Council. Boas and the Council expected her to research the personality of adolescent girls, to determine the extent to which nature (puberty) or culture influenced adolescent conflict. But Mead wasn't interested in this project. She accepted it because it got her a ticket to the field. Her real interest was ethnography. Unbeknownst to Boas, Mead struck an agreement with the Bishop Museum (Honolulu) to prepare a monograph on Samoa. Freeman shows by a meticulous reconstruction of her activities that she spent no more than four or five weeks on the funded project, hardly time enough for a systematic investigation of this complex and demanding subject. This is confirmed by her sparse field notes on the adolescent project.

Her strategic impostures led to the massive fraud that made her famous. Having little data, she just made it up and pretended, in the appendices of Coming of Age, to have found it. Mead seems to have delighted in slipping mickies as a kind of sport. She says, for example, that Samoa was untroubled by natural disasters. Yet it's common knowledge that no island is spared the ravages of storm, flood and occasional tsunamis. In fact, a hurricane devastated Manu'a in January of the year of her visit. She says that Samoan children alternately crawl or walk until the age of `three or four'. Every caregiver knows that once the child learns to walk, next it runs and never returns to crawling. She seems to have been supremely confident that no one would call her hand on such whoppers. Deception was so habitual that she lied gratuitously. Thus she told Boas that she was seasick for six weeks (!!) on her return voyage, while in fact she was romancing a new beau-love sick, not seasick. It's not surprising that her epistemological mottoes were: `The truth isn't out there, you know' and `If it isn't [true], it ought to be'.

Freeman's claim that the hoax `effectively solve[s] the enigma of Margaret Mead's research' unfortunately follows the fashion of substituting victimhood for active will. He would have us see her as the unwitting pawn of a mythopoetic fate. Fiddlesticks! Mead's behavior in Manu'a was a disgrace to herself and to her profession. Such conduct had no logical relation to Boasian anthropology. It was entirely her doing. Having deceived her hosts, she disgraced the sacrosanct taupou title by having affairs. That too was her personal choice. She went on to invent a salacious bisexual Samoa as a preamble to the part of Coming of Age that made her famous--her advocacy of educational, family, and sexual reform in America.

Mead's research presents no enigma. She always went to the field to find what she wanted to find-an uplifting story to boost a current social reform. As for those `primitives' who served as fodder, well, they were expendable in the great struggle to reform the world.

Let us see here: Freeman goes on to correct the picture of Samoa, and then uses incomplete and second-hand, and at times downright silly evidence to prove that Mead uses incomplete, second hand, and downright silly evidence.

Now, I am not the biggest fan of Mead, but she is the most misinterpreted anthropologist (probably as she is most popular), and Freeman's sociobiological approach simply goes nowhere.

I also resent the fact that Freeman was an intellectual covard, who chose to wait until Mead's death to publish any critique, in order for her to not be able to respond to it. For shame!

Though a book written some years ago, it is a very good investigation around the world of the similarities among different cultures.

Maria Boulton Benedetti.
Mexico City, Mexico.

Quite frankly, when I recieved the book and saw the picture of the man, I was a bit nervous. Then, after reading, I understood why. His fantasies of Mu are just that, fantasies, and there is no sound proof or third party backing of any kind. In every other book about the lost land, most of these books end up validating other books because they share common true knowledge. THIS,...content, and I use the term loosely, is just ridiculous. I knew I was in mirky waters when he referred to it as the 'motherland'. Hmm

I was also disturbed with the racial tone he took when discribing the people. (certain cultural groups being italisized for emphasis) I am an extremely open-minded person, but after the first fourty+ pages, I could no longer read. It is almost seemingly wishful fiction and insulting to anyone who has devoted time and effort to studying the lost civilization, much less wasted their money on it.

Simply put, wishful fantasy written by a man who, if I am not incorrect, was not even a Colonel in the first place! How I wish I could return this book and get something else!

Originally published in 1926, The Lost Continent of Mu is a classic text now with a new introduction by David Hatcher Childress. The Lost Continent of Mu theorizes that a now-lost continent once existed in the Pacific, with a thriving human civilization. Author Churchwald presents what he learned from ancient carved tablets, hidden for thousands of years in Hindu temple vaults, and the mysteries locked in their heretofore unintelligible arcane script. The script, allegedly the original language of mankind, told of an advanced worldwide civilization on a continent in the Pacific, which was eventually destroyed by cataclysm. A handful of black-and-white illustrations add a visual touch to this amazing speculation of unexplained wonders.

if you read about atlantis .then you should pick up a copy of this book.the author gives a good idea about a continet that sunk in the pacific over ten thousand years or so.a must read.

Great book for the open minded. However if you are devoute in your religous beliefs and feel that there is no other explaination except the Bible then this book may not be for you. I found the theory of Mu very interesting and enlightening.

I have not recieved the book at all

regards
Bhaskar Poojary

First off, it's difficult writing any book that generalizes about a country and culture so hats off to the author for trying. The info is probably more relevant to someone going to Western Australia 5-10yrs ago. I moved from Vancouver, Canada to Sydney, Australia to live and find the info mostly outdated. Some of the cultural conflicts such as misunderstanding what it means to be invited for tea are more applicable to the older generation. Sydney is a fast paced city of 4million. The younger generation, under 40, are very similar to people in Canada/US/UK. If you're coming from a Western english speaking nation, I don't believe this book is going to be your assimilation bible. If you're coming from a non-Western culture, I think you'll be better off reading Australian newspapers and watching Hollywood movies. You'll get along fine in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane - never been to Westcoast but I assume Perth or any other modern Australian city will be the same.

"Culture Shock! Australia: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette" by Ilsa Sharp is a guidebook to living in Australia. This book is not a travel guide, but rather a guide to the people and culture of the country. The main audience for this would be someone who intends to spend a lot of time in Australia, but it can also help business travelers, and even tourists.

I know someone who just moved to Australia from Asia, and from what I have been able to determine, this guide appears to be fairly accurate. I am looking forward to my visit there, which should also give me a better idea on just how accurate it is. Be sure to get the latest edition, as it was updated in 2005 and it is clear from my reading that there were substantial updates.

The author, Ilsa Sharp, migrated to Western Australia, and that personal experience clearly was a big asset to her in putting this book together. I did sense a bit of a bias towards Western Australia in her examples. To be fair, I was more interested in Eastern Australia, and so the bias may have been in my reading as well. In either case, she certainly does try to cover most of the country, and if I were to pick the one area where there was the least amount of information it would be Tasmania.

The book is broken down into 10 sections. These include a quick introduction, followed by basic information. Next is a discussion of the people, the society, and moving there. It then gets to some more specific areas such as food, entertainment, slang, and business. It then finishes with an A to Z section covering many basic facts about the country, some key figures both historical and modern, and it even has a short culture quiz.

As someone from the United States, this book is probably not as useful to me as it would be to someone coming from a much different culture. Not to say that Australia is just like the United States, but clearly the two are much closer than people from other countries from Asia and the Middle East. Even so, I think the book was fairly useful in understanding some of the societal differences between the two countries. This is one book that is easy to recommend.

This book does contain some interesting information on Australian culture, and on what makes Aussies tick. But I found the writing style to be particularly annoying; even painful. The Australia book available within the "Culture Smart" series, while offering less detail than this book, is far easier on the eyes and mind.

An American friend, five years in Australia, lent me her 1999 version of this book. I've been here two years, from England, so I found it interesting. I agree that it has been inconsistently updated, and the Australia of 1991 seems to have been different in many ways to the Australia of 2004. Also, life in Perth must be different to that in Brisbane, where I live, 2,700 miles away. For a start, they play Australian football (and soccer) whereas Rugby League is the main game here.

It would be highly surprising if the author's views/perceptions and mine tallied 100%, but in fact they do quite a lot. I was interested, for example, in her correct perception of sport being a good conversation topic, not least at dinner parties. Coming from a somewhat bourgeois part of the south of England, I found that a most refreshing change.

One problem the book has is that it sets out to be amusing (successfully) and serious: on tax for example. For the serious side, some of the drier books on living and working in Australia, or emigrating here, are better.

Finally, I found myself liking the author and her style. She comes across as pleasant and with a light touch.

Great book, couldn't put it down. Read it all in one sitting. Enjoyed the story and the discription of the places they traveled and their adventures. I felt I was right there with them. Makes me want to quit my job, get on my sailboat and take off. Found no problem with the way it was written, seemed honest and accurate. There must be a sequel or two, would love to find out what happened the next six months and what they are all doing now. Are you listening Alan??

Great story, hard to imagine they survived some of the things they went thru. Read it in record time. Just wished it hadn't of ended.
I see where he settled in the Caribbean where he lives and writes.
What is he writing now? Anyone know let me know.
Worth the money to me

If this book were a horse it wouldn't even make good glue. First, the author writes this in the third person which, after fifty or so pages, I finally over came. Then he uses italics and quotation catch phrases over and over and over and over - ad nauseum. There is a hint of the erotic, what with three women and just him. But it becomes apparent very soon that he is as bad a lover as he is a writer.

A complete waste of money and time.

This former real estate broker decided to sail away after his long-term marriage ends up in divorce. He makes it to Tonga where he meets up with 3 women who join him onboard his small sailboat. They live through storms, piracy, wonderful anchorages in deserted islands and exotic towns. The reading is very entertaining, the sail advice is not the best (he had only a few months of sailing experience before writing this book), the writing is not the best, but the story of these four souls is great. This is one of those books that are hard to put down and you are sorry they do not go on for another few hundred pages. The limited English can be forgiven as is so entertaining and original. Any male (and many females) that reads Alan's story will have a huge envy attack. It would be great to have a follow up book on what happened afterwards to each character in the book. It would be interesting to read the version of these events by the other participants. It would be reassuring to get confirmation that this story is real (or maybe not, a guy should not be that lucky!) There is no mention if the picture on the cover shows the actual characters. Anyway, it is great reading.

When reading this book, I kept thinking of this joke as a possible insight into why the author wrote his book:

This average guy, he finds himself stranded on a desert island with none other than Cindy Crawford. After some time, with no rescue, the average guy and Cindy start an intimate relationship.

Things are going quite well until one day, the guy asks Cindy something strage. The guy asks her if she will dress up like a man, and pretend he is the average guys best friend from back home. Cindy, a little taken back, thinks this is a little odd, but indulges him.

So she dresses up as the guys best friend and they proceed to walk along the secluded beach, Cindy 'playing' her part.

Suddenly, pretending that Cindy is his best friend from back home, the guy turns to her and says, 'Dude, you're never going to guess who I'm having sex with.'

That's what I kept thinking reading this book. Here is this guy, by his own admission nothing spectacular, sailing and carrying on a relationship with three women all at the same time on the same small boat. I've sailed enough to know that relationships develop fast on small boats, and you learn more about people a lot quicker and become closer as well. But here is this gentleman, not only living the sailing dream, but living it with three beautiful women. Is it any surprise he wrote a book about it? Hell, he should write two books.

Beyond that though, on another level, he conveyed how close they all came through their adventures. About the only thing I didn't like about the book, was it didn't tell how it ended and only covered 1/2 of their experience.

Maybe he is writing a second book.

I am a regular visitor to Maui and I got this book cheap at a library book sale because I am always interested in anything to do with Hawaii. It was surprisingly informative and accurate. The author has even covered some 'local' restaurants (unlike other guide books) she's now blurted to the world, but also missed a few, so some of my favorite finds are safe.
I liked the very detailed, personalized info on hotels etc: 'the owner leaves notes in your room saying things like bang the top of the TV twice if the reception is bad'.
This is an author who clearly enjoyed her research. I gave her four out of five only because she spills the beans on my favorite hideaway restuarant. Now I'll never get in!!!

Loved getting a bit of "history" along with what to do and what to see! You'll get a better feel for the island with this book. Very detailed (right down to the best roadside stand to buy fruit at on the road to Hana). We love this book....it will be our "bible" when we go...

I have both this book and Revealed and by far I recommend the Revealed book. This book is ok to use as a companion guide with Revealed, but I did not find it nearly as helpful. I mainly bought the Dummy book to see if I could get a different point of view about sites, restuarants, etc. and I did in some cases, but I will be using the Revealed book as my main guide when I go back to Maui this year.

The book seems a couple of years old (although it says it's published in 2005). There are certain places that have moved or closed. However, the general idea of the book is to familiarize you with Maui which I thought it fulfilled the overall purpose. There are great tips which I corroborated with locals including good snorkeling spots, best snorkel gear, best luaus, restaurant, shops, etc. It lists out the places you SHOULD go while in Maui and suggests what to avoid and refuse. This is my first Dummies travel book and I plan to use future Dummies along with the current year's Frommer's for updated info. By the way, Cakewalk in Paia....no longer there.

This is a pretty decent book, with some good information and tips on the island. The post it not tabs are nice to mark information you want easy access to. Some of the icons (heads up, kid friendly etc) are also helpful. Beware - there is some word for word duplication with the Frommers book.

For anyone traveling to Maui, this is a decent resource. But the ultimate is Maui Revealed.

As a history of Nauru from an environmental perspective, Paradise for Sale is a great resource. As an environmental microcosm of our planet, well, history is not necessarily an predictor of our future, even if it is often an indicator. You will have to come to your own conclusions.

The basic premise is that if humanity does not change its current consumptive habits, we will effectively starve ourselves into extinction by depleting our limited resources. Many of the points made are excellent, and it is an insightful view of how Nauru invited its own destruction by selling its fossil commodities to the highest bidder, realizing short-term gains at great cost to its population.

Unfortunately, the book is too preachy for its own good. McDaniel believes in his point of view so arrogantly, he required Paradise for Sale as part of the curriculum for Biology 101 at his school, Rensselaer in Troy, NY. McDaniel used the history of Nauru as a microcosm for the Earth, and a predictor of our future demise if we continue to consume at our current rates. He is not necessarily wrong, just a bit too self-righteous for this reviewer's taste.

Nice guy, though.

I came upon Carl McDaniel's "Paradise for Sale" because I had to write a paper on phosphate mining on Nauru for my Environmental Science class. His book covered many of the aspects I needed for my paper including a good history lesson on phosphate, the island itself as well as the history of phosphate mining on Nauru. The only downfall of the book was the "we're doomed" vibe I got while finishing pretty much every chapter.

If you want to learn anything about Nauru, don't bother. If you have a significant emotional investment in the idea that the earth is doomed and western culture is raping the planet, then this is the book for you. Just be sure to read it by candlelight so you aren't guilty of intellectual dishonesty (no animal fat or paraffin candles allowed, either).

But then intellectual dishonesty is at the very core of this book. The Nauran people, who you would think play the central role in this undeniable environmental tragedy, are mere scenery. The authors never bother to provide anything other than shallow reporting of their culture, history or current situation. The fact that the authors are lamenting on their behalf is presumably adequate. Similarly, as pointed out in another review, the authors wrote most of the book without bothering to visit, then spent thousands of dollars to ride on a gas-guzzling, ozone-destroying jet to add some credibility to their preconceived notions. And the whole analogy of Nauru (small isolated island with limited resources and diversity) as Earth (large, diverse lots of resources) is simplistic, but really relevant? The authors never really bother with relevance, because hey, simplistic analogies speak for themselves. In any case, the authors don't seem to have any serious credentials (other than burning sincerity and concern, which is often all you need in some circles), so it is hard to give much credence to what they say about science or anything else.

But what I found most offensive was the authors' condescending western liberal intellectual "gee aren't the natives cute and oh-so-wise" view of certain non-western cultures that they annoint as being "in tune" with their environments. They give a number of examples, but the one that sticks in my mind is the Ladhki (sp.?) people, who supposedly live in harmony with their harsh mountain environment. The authors concede that this culture has a high infant mortality rate, but that individuals who make it past the age of five generally enjoy a long healthy life. Well, that's just fine isn't it? As long as it's someone else's babies who are dying. . . But then that is the real problem, isn't it; too many people. If they would just stop reproducing (or living, at least since premature death is the unspoken aspect of "living in harmony with the environment) and aspiring to the same quality of life that the authors enjoy (well, they probably feel suitably guilty about it), everything would be fine.

Make no mistakes; turning a tropical island into a lunar wasteland is a terrible thing, and the people who have to live there probably wish things were different. But this is so blindingly obvious that a whole book on the subject would be (and is) ridiculous.

This book wasn't too bad. It has a good point, but the author does a lot of extrapolating and does not give a really good solution to the problem of resource overuse. Also, the author insults much of modern industrial society, but when he descibes his trip to Nauru, he mentions that he wants ice cream at one point and describes the food served there (beef, chicken, jello, and more) as good. Notice that these good foods and the availability of them are products of Western industrial society. Perhaps he is just another professor type who thinks he is above the common man because of his Ph.D and that people will not see the hypocrisy in his ideas and actions.

This is a book on the scale of "Silent Spring". Listen and heed it's message; this earth, our home, is in trouble. "Paradise for Sale" shows us, with fascinating and disturbing examples and in graphic detail, what can happen to the earth if we don't start changing our way of life. The good news is that it can be done but it has to start NOW! Read this book, it's important.

Lonely Planet guides have been my guide of choice for some time but this one was not up to snuff. It just wasn't detailed enough. Two areas that bothered me was nothing about the weather and I could not find the specific snorkeling information I wanted and that was one of the prime reasons for going to Tahiti and purchasing the book.
A general warning - the dollar will now only get you 75 polynesian francs instead of the 100 when the book was written. Not Lonely Planet's fault - the dollar has just sunk but what used to be expensive can now be almost ridiculous in price!

I was expecting more from lonely planet but aside from the maps, the book is obsolete. It also reads like a text book, no passion, no flavor, very boring. The sections on each area are not very big at all. ...

This new edition of LP's Tahiti and French Polynesia guide was invaluable on my recent trip. The details of the out of the way islands like Maupiti are wonderful, the writing is funny but clear and informative. It had details of local places and special spots that were not in the old one. I read up on the writers and one of them is an American woman who lives there, I could really tell that she understood the perspective of a tourist. I carried this book in my purse for the two and a half weeks I just spent there and referred to it often. Especially for the directions, cultural details and local customs that I needed. I felt like I had a local friend as my guide. I also find it comforting that they take no freebies from the hotels.
We stayed in small pensions and loved it, no one has screens in Tahiti it seems, but the guide did mention electric mosquito devices which was helpful, it also gave food details on the half-board places, and on the whole seemed accurate and well researched. The enthusiasm of the writing is infectious and I totally fell in love with Tahiti and the other islands we visited, I felt like I really got to know it better than I would have alone because of this book.

This book did a wonderful job of not only preparing us for the journey, but help us get around. We have now been there three times to three difference islands, and each time it preformed well. Although with all travel books they get out to date in a year or two, you should always call a head to verify critical information.

I've used many Lonely Planet (LP) guides and found this one to be lacking their usual detail. I got the sense much hotel information was pilfered from Web surfing the basic info, rather than first-person investigation. While still a good book to take, next time (and there will be a next time because Tahiti is wonderful) I'll be sure take another guide along with it, and to thoroughly read actual travelers' online reviews. I'll also know the questions I need to ask before booking. My sense was that the reviewers weren't seeing things through the fresh-eyes of a first time traveler. The details, such as directions accommodation features were often lacking.

One thing I've always liked about LP is that they will list small locally owned budget places - that are occasionally hidden gems - whereas many other guides only list "approved" chain-type accommodations. However, in this book key information about lodging was missing. For example, it's very uncommon to find window screens in Polynesia despite a lot of mosquitoes, yet it is not standard for the book to say if there are screens or mosquito netting at each location (sometimes there are neither). Screens would be a big selling point for me. In Lonely Planet's India guide - which I was quite happy with - they deliberately note whether hotels have air-conditioning or not; in this guide this rather important information (for the tropics) is randomly added. Sometimes we'd get there and they'd have AC and sometimes they wouldn't. A more specific example is a pension primarily described as "friendly" - which it was in spades - with no mention that there's one bathroom shared with 8 people and that doesn't have hot water. With what prices are in Tahiti, poor information is very costly. One "resort" (our over-water bungalow splurge) was merely described as "competitive with other luxury resorts." Come to find out it had bedbugs and no air-conditioning.

If level of detail can be evidenced by pages numbers, note that LP's Hawaii guide (five main islands) is 615 pages, while their Tahiti guide (50+ islands/atolls, with ten commonly traveled) is a only 287 pages.