New Zealand Books

A word of warning: Samuel Finer died before he could finish this work. His history stops at the time of the Industrial Revolution, and he did not edit the final piece: there are typos galore in the books. In spite of it all, this is one of the finest works written about government since the Federalist Papers, and it is every bit its equal.

Finer starts with the earliest records of the Sumerian city-states and ends with the French Revolution to look for "inventions" -- something new that a particular government creates and it becomes used ever after. For instance, the Jewish kingdoms of the Old Testament invented the idea of limited government: these theocracies had to follow the rules of the Torah and even the king was subject to God's law. The Roman Republic invented checks and balances as a way of preventing accumulation of all political power into the hands of one man.

The American Revolution created no less than six inventions that have spread around the world:

1) the Constitutional Convention -- a body, outside of government, of citizens, who represent the people, formulate a constitution for them, hand their work to be ratified by the people, and dissolve the Convention once their work had been done;

2) the Written Constitution -- a standard by which citizens can judge their government and also the fundamental law which governs mere statutory laws;

3) the Bill of Rights -- a way of protecting the individual by denying government by power to interfere with certain activities like speech and religion;

4) Judicial Review -- a way of enforcing the Bill of Rights, it also serves to signal the community when government is about to intrude into the forbidden zone;

5) Separation of Powers -- while Britain's government has separate branches for the different sociological groups (e.g. aristocrats in the House of Lords, middle classes in the House of Commons, etc.), America's government was the first to separate the branches according to strict function (e.g. the legislature makes laws, the executive enforces laws, and the judiciary interprets laws) so that no one branch can swallow another and obviate the checks and balances;

6) Federalism -- the idea that different tiers of government have different spheres of activities and that one tier should not invade the other's turf (e.g. states can't sign treaties, and the feds can't issue parking tickets).

Finer also covers the governments of the Greek republics, the Italian republics, the various Chinese dynasties, the representative assemblies of Europe, the Egyptian pharaohs, the Spanish colonies, the shogunate of Japan, the absolutism of France, the despotism of Russia -- in short, just about everything under the sun. It is truly a remarkable work that is well worth its expense. I can recommend no other book more highly than this one.

Finer answers the question: compare and contrast all important, documented human governments. It is both well written and aproprately complex. A type of history written all too infrequently in any age.

Can a modern day adventurer embark upon a meaningful expedition of discovery, even to the end of the world, when a call for aid can be instantly communicated via a global cell phone? Does having a safety net in any form negate the romanticized danger associated with heroism? On the surface, the answers may seem apparent. IceTrek, however, digs deeper, much deeper below the permafrost.

From the introduction: "During the austral summer of 1998-99, I spent three months traveling in Antarctica with two companions -- Jon Muir and Peter Hillary. Our goal was to ski unsupported [no outside assistance] from Ross Island to the South Pole and back -- a distance of almost 3000 kilometers [1864 miles], and a journey that had never been completed, although, almost a century ago, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, together with Dr Edward Wilson, Titus Oates, `Birdie' Bowers and Edgar Evans, came very close. They perished on the ice 270 kilometers [168 miles] from sanctuary and just 18 kilometers [11 miles] from sustenance."

IceTrek is the daily journal kept by Eric Philips of their 84-day traverse. Laying depots of food for the return trip along the way, the trekkers went from Scott Base across the Ross Ice Shelf, on an ascent via a new route over a river of ice known as the Shackleton Glacier, over the Transantarctic Mountains, onto the polar plateau, and then onward to the Titan Dome toward the pole. The writing is first-person gripping. Mentally and physically prepared for the challenge, the team had left with a common goal. They were ready to meet Antarctica's barriers, from cold-induced hypothermia, unpredictable weather, bare ice, icefalls and moraine (a streak of rocks carried by the ice), to the most dangerous of all - crevasses - cracks in the ice formed when a glacier flexes over an obstruction like a boulder. Anywhere from one to 15 meters wide, crevasses can be as deep as the glacier itself. A thin ice bridge that breaks easily under foot often hides crevasses, making them all the more treacherous.

But what of emotions and differences that would reveal themselves along the trek? How could a team united unravel? Philips writes: "What would emerge as the unending days ticked over, as each striven-for mile passed under our skis? How would minds deal with deteriorating bodies, claustrophobic blizzard-bound tents, interminably slow progress, dissolving dreams and compounding feelings that led from uncertainty to disrespect and, eventually, to outright loathing?"

Through the eyes of Philips, we are immersed into an ice age where survival is all. We are the voyeurs in their pristine and hazardous otherworldly environment that demands a lexicon of its own: serac, katabatic, sastrugi, rime, and firn are descriptive words of the environment we soon get used to. Writing from both the gut and head, Philips goes beyond the "the perfunctory, the landscape or the hardships" and it is his visceral candor of the good, the bad, and the ugly that draws the reader inside the little red dome tent that sprouted nightly on white Antarctica--the coldest and most remote spot on earth.

Instead of using ponies or dogs to pull gear and supplies, each team member would walk, ski, and kite toward their destination. Each trekker man-hauled a sleek custom made 2-metre-long Nylex Rotomould sled (200kg with load) that was designed and built especially for the trek by the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). When conditions were right, the trekkers clamped on skis and used a steerable Quadrifoil traction kite fitted to their special harnesses for powering themselves and the sleds across the expanse of ice and snow. Each member carried a 3, 5, and 7 square meter "nylon husky" to accommodate varying wind conditions. On the poleward leg, kites were practical only if a Northerly was blowing, which was rare. The anticipation was that the kites would really pull their weight on the return trip as the winds blew primarily from the pole outward. From the South Pole every direction is north. Wind power had not been lost on the Scott expedition. During one of their return trips, members of Scott's support team formed a crude sail by improvising the groundsheet of a tent fixed to a sledge; the sail power was used in tandem with man hauling.

You will never forget this Ice Trek because you are a participant from page one!

Going on a trek? Heading for the wilderness? Will you be alone and dependent on others? Choose your companions carefully is the message this book sends.

One man has the guts to speak the truth and condemns an outdoor hero to mediocrity. Eric Philips blames the failure of the 1999 Ice Trek expedition on the son of Everest conquerer Sir Edmund Hillary. Peter Hillary slowed the expedition to such an extent that this self supported sledging trip from Scott Base to the South Pole was the slowest ever and the return leg from the pole had to be cancelled.

Philips's description of the tensions induced by the weak member of the expedition trio, sets this book apart from the normal antarctic book fare. In fact, one now wonders what eminent authors like Scott and Shackleton left out of their famous antarctic memoirs.

Peter Hillary sued Eric Philips to try and stop publication of this book in his native New Zealand to avoid tarnishing his reputation. Philips later settled out of court so the book could go ahead and be published in North America.

Ice Trek is highly recommended reading for all adventure readers and antarctic buffs.

If you're interested in James Cook, read this one. I found it hard to put down, and an excellent source of info for all ages.

New Zealand historian J.C. Beaglehole made the history of exploration in the Pacific his life's work and no such effort could possibly be complete without a thorough understanding of the voyages of Captain James Cook. When Beaglehole started, the existing editions of Cook's Journal were not of high historical standards and, in decades of work with the original journals and auxilliary material, Beaglehole eventually produced the definitive, modern editions. They were originally published in the 1960s by the Cambridge University Press. Other outstanding, related works of Beaglehole are his "Life of Captain Cook" - read no other until you've read this one - and the "Journals of Joseph Banks"

Sir Peter Blake was a great adventurer and seaman. He was part of the team that won the America's Cup in 1995 and lead the defense of the title in 2000 for New Zealand, where he is a national hero.

This book is a celebration of his long and successful career sailing the world. In this last expedition, he goes from Antarctica to the Amazon, going all the way up the Casiquiare, teh legendary canal discovered by Alexander von Humboldt that connects the Negro with the Orinoco rivers. Throughout the books provides a glimpse of local history, with a special emphasis on environmental issues, which were very much on Blake's agenda in this voyage. His journals show a very deep concern for the future of both Antarctica and the Amazon, as tremendously different but similarly delicate regions.

The book is in hard cover format and has lots of pictures taken throughout the trip, which provide the reader with a visula context of the logbook. It is a sad story because it ends up in Peter's demise, attacked by pirates at the mouth of the Amazon, yet it stands as a tribute to a great sportsman and environmental leader.

If it's a large-size hardcover gift edition you seek celebrating adventure expeditions in general or the achievements of Sir Peter Blake in particular, make it Alan Sefton's editing of Blake's logbooks, The Last Great Adventure Of Sir Peter Blake. The text is drawn directly from Blake's logbooks as he journeys from the Antarctic to the Amazon, with fine color photos and paintings adding the visual delay which sets The Last Great Adventure apart from biographical memoirs alone. Plenty of factual information about the regions Blake explores, from animals to flora, make this an informational guide above and beyond its adventure biography theme.

Warri and Yatungka broke tribal law by marrying outside their assigned skin group. So they could live their lives together they ran away, perused by their former best friend in the name of tribal justice. It was a dramatic and true story that meant if they wanted to live it had be alone and in exile from all they knew before they eloped. As time went on young people left the desert and tribal laws broke down and were no longer followed - till they were left alone as the last true nomadic aborigines still in "their land" in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia.

This is the story of the "rescue" of Warri and Yatangka from the ravages of the worst drought in living memory in 1977 when they finally left their desert home for the last time. It's a book about a way of life which is now extinct - and the death of a millennia of knowledge on how to survive an environment which most people would say in uninhabitable at any time.

There's no way to disguise that this is a sad story and the passing of an age. However, I'm glad that at least a record of this event exists. One thing this book doesn't cover (or even mention) is the film documentary that was made at the same time the hunt was on for Warri and Yatungka, and the exclusion of that makes me wonder what else may have been left out of this narrative. However, if you have any interest in how Australian aborigines survived in a harsh desert environment this is a book you should pick up.

This book tells the story of the an elderly Aboriginal Australian couple, the very last of their tribe (and quite probably of all Aboriginals) to pursue the traditional nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life in the remote central deserts of Western Australia.
It starts by explaining how traditional tribal culture came to a near end in the region within the lifespan of a generation as civilization penetrated the once remote Outback, then recalls the life history of this last couple, explaining why they persisted in their homeland even after the rest of their tribe moved to a town.
Eventually, an extreme draught raises fears for their lives and a search expedition is launched to find them, lead by the author of this book and assisted by an old Aboriginal friend of the couple. The search takes them through the extremely harsh and remote Gibson Desert retracing ancient trade routes and rediscovering sacred Aboriginal sites, before finally locating the old couple, "the last of the nomads", and bringing them out of the desert to avoid immidiate starvation by helping them join the rest of their tribe living a demoralized existance on the fringes of western civilization, beset by alcoholism and other social evils.
Within a year, both of them die.
A brilliantly told, moving story of the disgraceful end of what was once "one of the oldest cultures on Earth", providing excellent background information to help the reader understand how complicated the the underlying roots of this sad outcome are.
Anyone with an interest in the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia should read this book!

I found the book to be very dsconnected. Definitely full of history but lacking in continunity. Mike Walker had so many sources to use and think he used them all, but many times he lost focus of Mary Bryant and tended to give a history lecture. Very interesting and informative, just didn't care for the structure of the book and presentation of the story.

As one who has spent his entire life in Australia, I can't help feeling that story of the First Fleet is almost a part of me. From an early age I was fed and I absorbed the legends of poor English children transported to Botany Bay for the crime of stealing a handkerchief or a loaf of bread. Brutal guards, corrupt officials and murderous natives are used to complete the picture, and to help create an Australian ethos which is - and of course I generalise - anti-authority, anti-British and, perhaps most tragic of all, anti-Aboriginal.
Mike Walker's work is, in that context, an important contribution to a more complete understanding of Australia, and Australians. It's also a darned good read.
Mary Bryant (nee Broad) is stereotypical in many ways - poor Cornish fisherman's daughter, driven to petty crime, almost hanged, transported, persistent, strong - and so it goes.
Her story moves from the stereotypical to the extraordinary as she battles all before her to return with her family to her beloved Cornwall.
While the tale itself is remarkable, and worth the price of admission in its own right, I enjoyed the other personalities just as much. James Boswell, Arthur Phillip, Watkin Tench (or, in an hilarious error in the index, "Watkin Fench"), and Ralph Clark all come to life in a real, raw and entertaining way, thanks to Walker's style, and also to the way he has structured the book.
"A Long Way Home" is a neat companion to Tom Kenneally's "The Commonwealth of Thieves," also published in 2005, and providing a more general account of the first four years of English settlement in what we now know as Australia.
Walker is more tightly focused, but no less incisive and insightful. His is a book for the vaguely-interested (in Australian history) and also for the vitally-concerned. It is beautifully presented, and - I'm writing this review in early December - would make a superb Christmas for any thinking person.

The B&B book is loaded with choices of nice places to stay with personal writings on each by the owner/operators of the various B&Bs. My only request would be for each entry to show one photo of the rooms at their establishment.

A beautifully illustrated book, very reasonably priced for the wealth of information it contains. My husband and I love choosing our own itinerary when travelling and especially love staying at Bed and Breakfasts. A very informative book which correlates very well with the Lonely Planet on New Zealand. I do have the Friar's Guide to New Zealand Accommodation for the Discerning Traveller 2005 which is a magnificent book to have in one's library. However, this Guide by Elizabeth James is something one can take on one's travels and is compact. It also has a great description and lovely, individual illustrations of many places of varying cost from which to choose in both the North and South Islands. A great purchase!

Mr Fitzpatrick has researched this topic well, as one would expect, and produced a book which will be of immense help to researchers and family historians.

With an Irish/Australian family background, I found the book very helpful in putting a detailed perspective on the privations of the Irish Immigrants, and those left behind in the homeland.

The book is not a light read. But it is very readable.

PS. I wish the publisher had bound the book as well as the author/editor had written it. Be careful. It will fall apart if opened wide!

Oceans of Consolation is a collection of 111 letters written between 1843 and 1906 to and from members of 14 families of Irish immigrants to Australia. The collections were gathered and the book is edited by David Fitzpatrick, an associate professor of Modern History and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.

The letters are augmented by profiles on each of the families written from genealogical, biographical and historiographical sources that give context to the letters and by six themed chapters in which Fitzpatrick analyzes the letters and the general subject of Irish emigration.

The author claims his work is distinguished from similar collections of Irish emigrant correspondence by its focus on "the forgotten vernacular of the steerage classes." In other words, Fitzpatrick aims to give insight into the Australian migration experience of Ireland's lower economic classes.

The book includes a Preface and an introductory first chapter explaining the method of the work. The Introduction is required reading if one is to have a thorough understanding of the many aspects of the author's complicated research method that yields what one well-published Australian historian calls a "showpiece."

The sets of letters penned by members of the 14 families are organized into chapters in four groups: News from Australia with three chapters of letters and associated family profiles; Victorian Voices containing profiles and letters to/from members of five families; News from Home, with letters and profiles of three families; and Ulster Accents with similar content on and by three families.

Six chapters of analysis follow the 14 family profile / letter chapters. Fitzpatrick includes these commentaries to explore "a formidable range of issues in the history of Ireland, Australia and human migration." It is in these 160 pages where Fitzpatrick meets his obligation as an interpreter of history. While the letters are valuable insight into the Irish-Australian migrant experience - they permit the reader to "hear" the idiom of the writers, thus to know them better as individuals - the meat of interpretation and historical value lies in the final six chapters.

A List of Sources and a Thematic Index complete the 649-page book.

Readers should be aware the Index is difficult to use. In a regrettable omission, the author and his editors fail to include page numbers for the key word references. Instead they are identified with a "letters-number-letter" sequence: a two-letter abbreviation of the family name; a number designating the specific piece of correspondence in which the word, phrase or reference is to be found; and an alphabetical letter identifying the pertinent paragraph in the specific letter. If one is to use the Index, this reader-unfriendly method forces one to memorize the abbreviations of the family names, then to plod tediously through the book to find the citation. The effort is often unjustified by the return.

Fitzpatrick's goal is to discover how the written word sustained solidarity among lower-class 19th Century Irish families separated from their emigrant relatives by the mighty ocean distance between Ireland and Australia. He also claims to reveal the differences between Ireland and Australia and what he calls "the very nature of Irishness."

Because of his complex research method and reliance on "letters of the unlettered," there is little doubt this book was difficult to produce. With commendable candor, Fitzpatrick confesses his need for "the courage to complete what sometimes seemed an impossible assignment." He apparently wishes he'd been more disciplined either in defining his scope or pursuing it. Regardless, Oceans of Consolation is a tour de force.

Fitzpatrick consulted an extensive list of sources, both individual and institutional. He expresses his gratitude to descendents of the correspondents whose letters are included in the book. He is equally grateful to numerous institutional sources and individual specialist scholars in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. His long list of institutional sources included public and university libraries, archives, museums, offices of public records, church registers, Catholic religious orders and Protestant fraternal organizations.

Fitzpatrick discusses the twin challenges of distance and delay that confronted Irish-Australian families in their correspondence written, he says, to "reinforce the emigrant's fading link with `home'." Both had much greater impact on the new Aussie family than on families of Irish émigrés to other lands, notably England and North America.

Four letters written by Michael Hogan between 1853 and 1857 to his brother Mathew, a cooper and publican in County Tipperary, are the subject of Chapter Five and illustrative of the book's content. As in all the letter collections, the editor's impressively researched and well-written family profile precedes them.

Fitzpatrick tells us Michael Hogan, the only convict immigrant featured in the book, arrived at Port Jackson, Australia on the good ship, "Blenheim" from Cork on Nov. 14, 1834 after being convicted of "maiming" at the Cashel Quarter Sessions in January, earlier that year.

Fitzpatrick refers to the Clonmel Herald to describe the charge against him. "Hogan's violent assault on James Kinnealy had been unprovoked and no motive could be assigned for it by the prosecutor. The principal witness in the case was a little girl of about eight or ten years of age, whose testimony was as artless as convincing."

Fitzpatrick uses Blenheim's "printed convict indent," the penal system's answer to a passenger list or cargo manifest, to introduce us to Michael. He is described as "an unmarried, literate, Catholic `farm laborer' aged 27 years, just over 5 feet 6 inches tall; with a `dark ruddy freckled' complexion, brown hair, bluish eyes and `scar top of left side of forehead, top joints of both little fingers crooked.'"

After receiving his "ticket of leave" - his release - a year early in 1840, Michael Hogan married Margaret O'Brien, also formerly of Tipperary, who bore him seven children. Michael worked at several jobs, bought a freehold house (the house plus the land on which it sits) in south Melbourne, sent his brother two checks of £30 each and referred in his letters to the presence in his house of several servants. His self-image revealed in his letters "was that of a man who had made good," writes Fitzpatrick, "and wished this to be recognized." Michael died in 1873, a widowed laborer who had earned the means to have buried his wife and two of his sons in an eight-foot square grave plot in Melbourne's Old Cemetery.

Thus the reader arrives at the actual letters with an appreciation of the background and personality of their writers. Fitzpatrick's well researched and artfully crafted family stories bring life to the letters, thereby enhancing the reader's experience and raising the historical value of the work.

Fitzpatrick suggests lower class Irish-Australian correspondents often seem to have sought help to write their letters. "Help" means reference to letter-writing manuals, plagiarism of friends' letters and dictation of desired messages to more accomplished - maybe even professional - letter writers. Among many common elements, Fitzpatrick cites the frequency of elaborate, identical salutations and Irish-Australian expressions of intimacy resembling "those recommended in manuals for `the juvenile correspondent'."

He says one might presume this style was quintessentially Irish, but he turns to an English manual published in 1856 to verify it conformed closely "to the general base of letter-writing as practiced by uneducated persons." In other words, there's nothing special in this fact; the same characteristic would have been true, for example, of lower class Irish in North America and England. This is the case with many of Fitzpatrick's observations: perhaps pertinent to Irish emigrants in general, but not unique to the history of Irish-Australian migration.

As is the case for economists, political scientists and sociologists, it's important for historians to focus on statistically significant data and avoid wasting effort where the knowledge is less valuable. With this in mind, Fitzpatrick spends too much time in his analyses at the 50th percentile of interpretation. For example, he writes "The letters illustrate eagerness and reluctance to emigrate in roughly equal measure" and "Advice concerning the prospects for future emigrants, when directive, was as often discouraging as encouraging." These letters are obviously not a statistically valid sample of all Irish-Australian migrant correspondence. Nevertheless, it would be preferable for this editor - and all historians, in this reviewer's opinion - to focus on attitudes and feelings shared by at least 75 percent of his sample. It is at the poles of the semantic differential where the most meaningful learning is to be found.

Fitzpatrick wanders frequently from his Irish-Australian thesis in his six commentaries. He writes extensively about the Irish emigrant experience per se, but often fails to drill down into any geographical destination. He spends time on conditions in Ireland, but often doesn't link his topic either to the families of emigrants or emigrants themselves. He occasionally slips away to citations about Irish emigrants to North America without comparing or contrasting the parallels with their Australian cousins.

Perhaps because they are written as summaries, the final two chapters contain several more specific Irish-Australian examples of the emigration experience, important because they support Fitzpatrick's objective. Here are two of many:

* It was the rough life of the outback, bush, homestead, or diggings which engrossed those trying to imagine Australia from Ireland.

* Emigrant letters gave Irish readers graphic accounts of the unfamiliar Australian climate, with its bewildering succession of floods, frosts and fires and above all its summer heat.

History professor Patrick O'Farrell of the University of New South Wales is quoted in "The Sydney Morning Herald" on his reaction to Oceans of Consolation.

"I am humbled by what Professor Fitzpatrick has done so exhaustively and so well . . . It would be hard, if not impossible, to better his treatment of the exercise he has undertaken; this is a showpiece, a master class, in the handling of a certain type of historical source."

Judith Reid of the Library of Congress says the book is definitely "an important acquisition for libraries collecting Irish and Australian history and emigration history."

Professor Fitzpatrick has produced a Herculean contribution to the history of the Irish-Australian emigration experience in Oceans of Consolation. We trust he has enough energy left for other work of equally high value that will add to the body of knowledge on the subject. At the least, we hope he got some rest after this one. He earned it!

I learnt of this book from a friend in London -- it is an excellent history of race and British imperialism. The author has a very impressive breadth of knowledge and writes clearly. I really liked the material on India, especially on Sikhism. It is nice to read a British historian who takes religion seriously and who read Indian sources. The final chapter of the book on Indian nationalism shows the ways in which Hindu nationalists used this Aryan idea for their own Nazist needs agains Muslims and Sikhs.

In the 1760s, as the British Empire expanded into Asia and the Pacific, its rulers proposed that certain peoples could be understood, and privileged, as a separate ?Aryan? race. Aryanism suggested that this whole region had originally been peopled by successive waves of vigorous Aryans, culminating in British colonisation. Ballantyne traces how this idea ?was used to naturalise, justify and celebrate British colonisation of South Asia.?

Chapters 1 and 6 look at imperial notions of India, which were used as a template for understanding other colonised societies. Chapters 2 to 5 examine how the Empire used these to try to control New Zealand?s Maori society. As ever, the empire exploited existing social divisions, to divide and rule, while claiming that it freed the most exploited from bonds of caste and priestly power. It called its domination ?liberation?, its exploitation ?development? and its wars ?pacifications?.

Unfortunately, Ballantyne commits what we may call the scholarly fallacy, asserting that the empire was woven together by webs of relationships, modes of discourse, rather than hammered into place by the capitalist mode of production. Only in passing does he note that the East India Company, the revenue manager for Bengal, collected increased revenues while famine killed a third of the people. Under Empire, rule, regular famines, in 1770, 1783 and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, killed tens of millions.

Ballantyne does not challenge the imperial myth that settlers, both military and missionary, benefit the host country, not their own individual gain. This is now transmuted into the liberal myth that immigrants benefit the host country.

He claims that there was a ?progressive? side of Aryanism, inclusive, globalising and non-racist. He praises the imperial policies of free flows of labour and products and ideas, and he opposes all forms of nationalism as exclusive and racist. This fits neatly into the Empire?s hostility to ?backward-looking? nationalism, and it also suits US imperial policy today.

But empire is always undemocratic, because it is based on rule by one class over other nations. Empire benefits its rulers, never the peoples, whatever the forms in which people think.

i thought this was a good book for kids. it has the definition of some of the difficult words on the side of the text and has great art to complement the stories. but for someone from the islands, it was a bit dissappointing in that some of the legends were seriously augmented. granted, there are many versions of the same legends in the islands but not one that is so far from all the rest that they are hardly recognizable, save for the title. but overall, i found the book to be beautifully written and magical.

The legends and folk lore embodied in the culture and values of Pacific island peoples are showcased in Pacific Island Legends, a single, easy to read volume that is beautifully illustrated with the woodcut images of Connie J. Adams. Educators Bo Flood, Beret Strong, and William Flood have successfully collaborated to present forty-four legends from all over the Pacific, serving to provide cultural access that will be appreciated by scholars and non-specialist general readers alike. Pacific Island Legends is a highly recommended addition to any personal, academic, or public library multicultural myth, legend and folklore reference collection.