Hawaii Books

This book is fun for toddlers because they can hold it in the little arch. And it has some really nice textures to feel. I love the slippery gecko! It's a fun book, and much more unusual than most of the other touch and feel books out there.

What a fantastic version of the touch and say books! Finally, my son and I can touch and say other animals besides cats, dogs, zoo, and farm animals! My son recieved this book as a gift from Grandma when she came home from Hawaii (he's had it since birth). He carries it around with him and often chooses it out of the MANY other books he has. A definite buy! Be sure to check out Rainforest Touch n Say Hawaii too!

It's a boardbook, NOT hardcover!

The only two drawbacks: more exspensive than some other books and not a lot of words--still worth it, though! :-)

This book is one of the most helpful when planning a trip to an exotic place. The pictures tell the story. I can't wait to take the family to the Seychelle Islands.

A wonderfully compiled and well thought out resource. Sarah Carpin knows and loves Seychelles and renders an entertaining and informative summary of the history, culture and land.

Korean shamanism played a crucial role in traditional village religion, and the concepts and assumptions embodied in it are still present in Korean culture. Yet the village traditions have been disappearing, or at least rapidly changing, in modern Korea.

Kendall's thesis is that if you really want to understand Korean religion, shamanism is essential. Traditional scholars (influenced partly by Confucianism and partly by a "scientific" disdain for "superstition") emphasized Buddhism and Confucianism, with Christianity appearing and thriving in recent times. Shamanism and women's religious traditions were considered unimportant to the "official" religion of Korea. But Kendall argues successfully that actually the various traditions (not counting Christianity) are/were complementary in practice; the women's rituals dealt with some issues, the men's with others.

Underlying the discussion is the issue of women's traditional roles in Korea, which were frankly oppressive, and yet as Kendall reveals, of course the women were not entirely powerless. Kendall argues that women's roles complemented men's roles, implying (Kendall doesn't say so explicitly) that traditional accounts have overemphasized women's formal inferiority at the expense of an accurate understanding of the reality of everyday life and religion.

Anyway, this book is a very good introduction to the shamanist tradition in Korea--not so much an overview, but an introduction. She barely mentions the varieties of traditional shamanism in Korea, and gives minimal accounts of the mythologies associated with the gods, very minimal descriptions of the rituals. She is a little more interested in the way the women understand and experience them. She is most interested in the relation of the shaman and household religion to elements of everyday life such as sickness, business or educational success, marital conflict, and so on.

In short, it's kind of an introduction to women's ritual from the point of view of the women who practice it, rather than from the point of view of comparative anthropology or folk anthologies or something like that. Yet of course it is ultimately anthropological and scholarly. She does make helpful asides in the text and footnotes regarding typical scholarly interests, and concludes her study with comparison to Japanese, Okinawan and Chinese folk religious traditions (missing, in my opinion, is the Burmese, which I think is more similar to Korean folk tradition than any of these).

I recommend, if you are studying Korean religion, reading this book early in your study, if not first. My only criticism would be its brevity: if you've never been to Korea, you can't begin to imagine what a "kut" looks or sounds like. She doesn't do a good enough job describing it. Thus, I would say, this should probably not be the only book you read on Korean shamanism; just the first one.

I want to emphasize a few other books on Korean religion, just in case. The Janelli's have done a great study of ancestor worship, which is as fundamental as shamanism to Korean religion; while Buswell has done good studies of Buddhism (start with "The Zen Monastic Experience"). He's turned his attention to Christianity now, and I haven't kept up with him, but I suspect his work there is the best in that field as well.

It's been years since I read this book and I still remember how delightful I found it. The author's participatory study is illuminating and her subject matter interesting, but one thing I remember above all -- her prose style, the manner in which she communicates, is of the highest order for a study of this sort. This author is worth reading wherever you find her for her literary value alone, let alone the light she sheds on an important and little-understood aspect of Korean life. Go read!!

The first portion of this book is a bit slow but I was more interested in the Japanese side of events. When it got to the Japanese aspect it was all I was looking for. It has great insight and information on the competing factors between the British and Americans. I came into this subject pretty ignorant on Thailand and its government. This book helped to clarify things.

Stowe's engaging book covers the political and diplomatic history of Thailand during the defining years between 1932-1945. The book clearly discusses the influence of the military elite in the abolition of absolute monarchy in Thailand as well as the international political maneuverings that took place (between Thailand and the opposing powers of Japan and the Allied nations) during WWII. The author's style of writing also manages to sustain my interest until the very end. Highly recommended.

Thai historian Thongchai Winichakul's account of a critical period in Thai history pairs an originalap proach with thorough academic research. As the subtitle `a History of the Geo-Body of a Nation' already suggests, the book deals with the crucial episode of the formation of Thailand as a nation-state.

Inspired by Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's seminal work on nationalism, the author explains in his introduction that he intends to focus his analysis on a by historians much neglected aspect of the spatio-temporal category: geography.

Taking the traditional Buddhist worldview as a starting point, he describes how 19th Century Siam, as Thailand was then called, had to come to terms with the many alien concepts considered commonplace in the science of modern geography. Many of these concepts were to have important political implications.

Deriving its political system from the Buddhist `Mandala model', the Siamese initially had great difficulies coping with the elementary aspects of political geography. Boundaries and more in particular border demarcations were, if not unknown altogether, considered of minor or no importance in the political view of the traditional ruling class. The Siamese were perfectly at ease in dealing with often illdefined and fluid spheres of influence, frontiers and the `thick lines' of the boundary regions separating the indigenous political entities of Southeast Asia. Likewise they saw no contradiction in the double sovereignty under which the territories at the `margins' of the regional kingdoms often fell.

But the Siamese proved to be fast learners and Thonchai quickly dispels the myth that the Siamese were mere victims of or only innocent bystanders at the high political game that was played by the colonial powers in 19th Century Asia. Instead he contends that Siam was very conscious of what was at stake and was just as much a player as Britain or France.

`Siam Mapped' is an innovating, provocative and very refreshing account of a very important phase in the history of Thailand. Already exercising its influence on the further course of research into the development of the Thai national-state, this book is a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in the history of Thailand or nationalism in general.

For anyone interested in Southeast Asia, Colonialismm, Nationalism, politics of geography, and Thailand this book is a must read. I only wish I would have been recommended before reading numerous websites slanted in Nationalist Discourses of which this text put back into realistic perspective. This text in fact was important in directing me into a specialization area in my field of Thai/Southeast Asian studies.

For me a Falang(foreigner) the most important thing is that it's written by a Thai scholar. The value of this is priceless in my opinion especially in a Thai context with the level or saturation of the National narrative in Thai society today. As I was once told "Only a Thai would understand" so for all readers but especially Thais this is groundbreaking work.

It's nice to have something uncommon on the bookshelf. This Hawaiian folktale is sumptuously illustrated and magically re-told. The story enlivens the imagination, and you won't be able to stop looking at the warm, textured art. I loved it.

Traveling to Kauai many times and driving by Nounou mountains along the coast is so interesting to read this children book. Beautifully illustrated and a cute story. If you love Kauai you will love this book. A must read to all children! Aloha!

This book consists of thirteen passionate and riveting stories told in a humorous manner. These episodes took place where individualism was replaced by collectivism for the common good. They portrayed madness during a time when madness became normality. In this book, the innocent allowed "wise" people to do good for all and only "wise" ones ended up doing well. I highly recommend this book for its account of ordinary people struggling and perishing under repression.

An incredibly poignant and touching memoir of Sheldon Lou's experiences while growing up in China during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Despite the personal challenges and tragedies, the author tells his story without the heaviness often found in such memoirs, allowing readers to make their own judgements and draw their own conclusions. Sheldon Lou's ability to weave humor throughout his touching stories is remarkable, refreshing, and much enjoyed. This book is also a great read for anyone interested in modern Chinese history -- especially the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.

This is more than a gorgeous over-sized coffee table book, and it depicts far more than the standard tourist-fare scenes and sound-bites. It is a very large book with hundreds of photos that depict a myriad of true Hawaiian scenes -- far more detailed and "real" than the usual calendar shots. In addition, it includes text that provides the opportunity to actually LEARN about the Islands -- which facilitates an even deeper appreciation -- in concise and very readable style. Excellent-quality paper with a few very large fold-out photos.

I bought this book from Amazon after seeing a beat-up copy at a local book chain store. I had been looking around for a coffee table picture book of HI for my wife's parents and comparatively this is the best around. It is newer than any others that I looked at and has better aerial views in my opinion, both in variety and quality. I am quite the critic since I am fortunate enough to live here, so take my advice if you are looking for a souvenir from your vacation buy this book. You won't be disappointed!

A scholarly study of this quality and from this perspective was long overdue. I was especially captivated by the first half of the book, which discusses the works of two contemporary Japanese women authors, Miura Ayako and Sono Ayako. As a passionate fan of Miura Ayako's writing, I was thrilled to see her works taken seriously by a western scholar, and I find it difficult to understand why it has taken so long for her to be noticed. Gabriel "gets the point" of the books he discusses, he grasps the nuances of the original Japanese, and his analysis is thoughtful, scholarly, and at the same time highly readable. I hope to see more studies of this nature in the near future.

This is by far the most important book on Japanese literature that I've read in a long while. It is one of the very few studies (that I know of, anyway) that directly address in a sustained and nuanced fashion the complex role of spirituality in modern Japanese literature, with a special eye to the productive tensions between faith and doubt (and between institutional religion and literature itself, for that matter). Philip Gabriel also has a real knack for getting the balance right between recapping the stories and analyzing them. I knew nothing of the first two authors he discusses, the Protestant Christian Miura Ayako and the Catholic Christian Sono Ayako, but I was able to follow his discussion with great interest; on the other hand, I'm pretty familiar with the contemporary authors Murakami Haruki and Oe Kenzaburo and have read the works by them that Gabriel treats, but his description of the stories really brings out what is significant about them in light of the issues under discussion. The book overall keeps up the pace and is consistently thought-provoking. This book matters!

In the introduction, Gabriel relates how he grew disenchanted with postmodern fiction and criticism and came to value an approach that takes on the major issues of life in a meaningful way. I think this is a huge step in the right direction. My sense is that generally speaking this is why most authors write and why most readers take the time and trouble to read what they've written, and I hope literary criticism will continue to follow Gabriel's lead here in taking that aspect of literature seriously.

Full disclosure: I have an MA in Linguistics from the Univ. of Hawaii. I did not learn Hawaiian from this book, but I have used it since to teach classes on the mainland. It is not the newest Hawaiian grammar, nor one of the ones the Hawaiian people are now using in immersion schools for their kids, but it is the best for mainlanders in my opinion because:

(1) It is laid out in an easy-to-use fashion;
(2) It doesn't start with "what is your name," telling time and the weather.

Honestly, do you go around talking about names, the time and the weather in English? You would sound like Forrest Gump. This is my biggest beef with language texts, and I have no clue how adults can be motivated to learn from such books.

Spoken Hawaiian starts out with a simple, unbelabored intro to pronunciation--which can be pretty scary for a mainland English-only speaker--and goes immediately to a short list of Hawaiian words used in English on the Islands. Even mainlanders may know some of these (like "aloha" and "kahuna") and be comforted.

Then the book gets right into simple sentences and dialogues that at least attempt to have a non-insulting, plausible context to them. (Life is not like a box of chocolates in this grammar book.)

Spoken Hawaiian was written by a pro linguist who also taught the language, and the benefit of this is that grammar is spoon-fed, little by little, in the guise of sentence "patterns" that are then practiced in exercises that expand knowledge gradually. Hawaiian grammar is really different from English, and for presenting it to learners, this is the least confusing book I've seen.

The drawback is that the book is old, from the time when only academics and other dilettantes, and maybe the occasional hula student, really wanted to know Hawaiian. The spelling of certain words is outdated, and the vocabulary is limited. Newer books, like Olelo Oiwi by Hokulani Cleeland, provide newer words and a ton more info on usage, social context, geographic dialect variations, etc.

Olelo Oiwi (which means 'native language') was put out by a group that is working to revive Hawaiian as a native language. Anyone who really wants to get with the program and has a political or social commitment to Hawaii will want to use it. But I find its layout wordy and confusing for newcomers on the mainland, who really want just to know the basics, or want to converse about non-Hawaiian topics. (I am teaching serious hula students/culture learners on the East Coast; both Hawaiian and haole.)

For mainlanders, including ethnic Hawaiians with little contact back home, I would suggest Spoken Hawaiian first, and using Olelo Oiwi as a follow-on and review book. If you're going to be living in Hawaii and/or travelling in Hawaiian cultural circles, though, you're going to want to get into Olelo Oiwi as soon as possible, even if it means learning to count, tell time, and talk about the weather first. The Hawaiian people are serious about getting their language back, and serious students need to follow the current cultural wave.

Pro linguists, too, will probably want to see what Hokulani Cleeland has to say, and it's a rich source of knowledge. But in my opinion, the graphical layout of Olelo Oiwi is heinous. Most of the (vast) info in it is probably better presented conversationally by a standup instructor; and for all I know, that's how it's used in classrooms in Hawaii. Trust me that you need to be devoted to the language, or languages in general, to plow through the notes, or to determine what you are supposed to be doing with the oddly formatted practices and drills in Olelo Oiwi.

Spoken Hawaiian, by contrast, is a breeze to use for high-school age and up. It builds grammar and vocabulary slowly, without troubling the learner's mind with too much detail and variation, and ends with several samples of "real" written Hawaiian, taken from documents from the 1800's. (This book was written before the current resurgence of native speakers.) If you study with Spoken Hawaiian and follow through with it to these documents, I think you'll feel very happy with what you've accomplished; and you'll be well prepared to partake of the more up-to-date sources.

Combining fascinating information on Hawai'ian culture together with comprehensive grammatical explanations, Spoken Hawaiian goes above and beyond most other foreign language texts, allowing the reader to slowly become fully immersed. For anyone learning Hawai'ian from the very start, or interested in Hawai'ian culture, this book is a must