Hawaii Books

This is an outstanding narrative for reading aloud to second graders studying Alaska, birds, or migration. It's inspiring, well-written, and full of powerful vocabulary. Lovely, realistic watercolor illustrations.

The last of the selections in the book, Militarized Streets, is about Japanese troops sent to China to advance the effort to enlarge the area under Japanese colonial control.

What is remarkable about the work is that it's written from the point of view of the rank and file soldiers, who find themselves lied to about their mission, and becoming ever more conscious of how they have been betrayed to advance Imperial foreign policy aims, and Japanese business interests.

As the Japaese soldiers grow closer to Chinese workers at a match factory they have been sent to guard, and begin to defend them against their employers, who treat them with great cruelty, their officers kill a group of the soldiers to stop the growing dissent in the ranks.

The writer was a soldier in the Japanese Army, and the authenticity of his own experiences informs the work.

It's a good window into unknown land: that many Japenese soldiers hated what they were ordered to do, and resisted.

It's a very timely book.

Thomas Barton

A "MUST HAVE" book for anyone planning to visit Hawaii who plans on flying/touring the Hawaiian Islands. It is the most thorough guide to flying in the Hawaiian Islands I have seen to date. Highly recommended for kamaainas (locals), as well ... they too will find much useful information in this handy, easy to take along book.

Full of information very useful in planning and preparing for your island flights, especially if you are not familiar with the various island airports/airfields or the local terrain & common conditions and the potential hazards to avoid.

This book is very thorough and contains many insightful tips including important safety considerations, best time of day for flights explained, typical and uncommon Hawaiian Island weather conditions and how they can affect your flight, as well as areas and conditions to avoid flying in and why, and much more.

The section highlighting sights to see is conveniently broken down by island. The most impressive sights are quite nicely summarized so you can quickly become knowledgeable as a tour guide for your passengers. The photos showing many of these impressive sights in the book are a nice touch.

Some other nice features in this book, besides the scenic photos, are the runway/airfield diagrams & photos for each of the airports/airfields, as well as some approach/departure routing diagrams. These are quickly found in Appendix A, along with all the important information you will want to know about each airport/airfield, such as elevation, runways & lengths, lighting, communications frequencies, services available, and more. Also a handy reference, is the listing of all Fixed Base Operations in Appendix B, with all the important information listed for each.

This book is full of lots of useful information, photos and diagrams summarized in a compact book that is easy to take along & refer to.

Highly recommend this book, without hesitation, to anyone flying in the Hawaiian islands or considering it! It is worth more than it's price in valuable tips, important considerations and as a handy reference.

Remember reading poetry in high school? (It doesn't matter if you liked it, just recall.) The teacher would ask questions like "What does line 17 mean?" You'd struggle to explain.

Well, it really DID mean what you said. But, it also meant something else, a connection with line 34, perhaps, making it richer. It was more complex than you'd realized, a bit of a process of discovery, correlation. It had connectivity. Oh yeah, line 34. Then, you learned that pesky line alluded to a phrase in Shakespeare, the Bible, something else. All of a sudden your brain was reeling in a really big fish. For all of that and perhaps yet more, "line 17" was the focus of a field of meanings. And then in later years some new connection was formed to "line 17." The meanings grew, the connectivity grew, the process continued.

Thus we find this new publication of the Zhongyong. It is a translation, certainly. It also is informed by recent archaeological discoveries. The earliest written version of many standard classical texts date from centuries later than the original. These new discoveries are of much earlier versions of standard texts, with less of the patina of age than subsequent versions.

Even more, though, it incorporates awareness of the philosophical filters for classical Chinese thought and modern Western thought. The overlay of one filter on another may create an interference pattern. Such a pattern is discrete. It may be attractive, but it does not convey the original. In honoring both philosophical filters, Chinese and Western, Professor Ames offers greater insight into complexities of meaning, nuances of context, a glimpse of the continuity and poetry distilled in this ancient text.

It grows on you.

The glossary of key terms is a treasure mine. Here, you can take a bath in the meaning of a term, really get wet, see it from the inside. As so often happens on emerging from a bath, insight and appreciation grow.

Consider the term "cheng." Ames adopts "creativity" as cheng's focal meaning within this work. At the same time he connects "cheng" with "integrity" and "sincerity." Here they are lesser-included concepts, supportive of the classical meaning and our modern, fresh understanding of "cheng." In context they sometimes are even the primary sense.

How many Westerners would connect sincerity with creativity? In a lesser translation we would never make the connection. But there it is, and we're enriched thereby.

Section 9 of the Zhongyong, as translated, reads: The Master said, "Even the world, its states, and its clans can be pacified, even ranks and emoluments can be declined, and even flashing blades can be trodden underfoot, but focusing the familiar affairs of the day (zhongyong)-this is no easy matter."

Two and a half millennia show little change in the ease of the affairs of the day. Our understanding of that classical thought, however, is newly focused.

The poetry is back.

Escape To The Hawaiian Islands is a breathtaking compendium of Bob Holmes outstanding photography, enhanced with Paul Wood's informative text and the combination makes for an ideal guide for what to do and see when visiting the Hawaiian Islands on pleasure or business. From hiking through a bamboo forest to stargazing on a mountain top to the excitement of a hula festival, Escape To The Hawaiian Islands is as entertaining as it is informative. If you are planning a trip to the islands of Hawaii, begin with browsing the pages of Wood and Holmes' Escape To The Hawaiian Islands!

As a Westerner who has done a lot of meditation in Thailand over the last 18 years, I've been curious to know the history of meditation in Thailand. I've also wondered about the Tudong or wondering monks whom I've occasionally seen here. This book explains it all. It is also very inspirational for serious meditators and might even inspire people who are curious about meditation.

As far as I can tell (having spent about a year in Thai monasteries), Kamala is right on the button in everything she writes. My only complaint about the book is that the footnotes are in the back instead of at the bottom of the page.

This book should deserves a wide audience.

Louis Baldovi has crafted a masterful work of wartime storytelling from first person experiences of Hawaii's Korean War veterans. Their individual stories are masterfully woven thrugh the sequence of events that defines the Korean War from beginning to end. It's more than just a collection of personal oral histories, it's an integrated account of a Forgotten War than cannot be left forgotten.

You've got to be in the midst of it to know what it's like. and after you've gone through it in the pitch darkness of night, on the battlefields, behind enemy lines, in POW camps - it's not something easy to reminisce about. In fact, for some of the vets, it was better to "forget and erase' in order to go on. For those veterans who did, this was time of their lives that cannot be forgotten. The feelings reach deep and cannot be erased. They told it like it was for only somebody like Louis to relate to us. He was there too.

To me, it's simple but profound. We've heard it many times, "war must be the closet thing to hell." I've never been there, to war or to hell, so I can't be sure. But, if you have a hankering to know for sure, this book will take you close , and perhaps, make you appreciate why they say "War Is Hell." It is not a good place to go, under any circumstance. But, you got read the book. Somehow, I found it strangely touching the soul.

As an Anthropology student at the Australian National University, Taylor spent two years in South Vietnam (92-94), then returned to this country in 95, 98, and 99. Faced with a unique southern identity, he decided to define the "idea of the South".

North and South Vietnam despite decades of postwar communist control are two completely different countries from the political, social, economical, and even musical aspects. In the first decade after the 1975 fall of Saigon, the communists controlled everything down to the toothpaste the Vietnamese used. Faced with poverty and income loss, southerners began to peddle their cherished belongings to the black market in order to survive. While goods in state stores were scarce, everything was available on the black market. Goods and money sent home from overseas Vietnamese swelled this illicit economy. As a result, the southern economy rebounded. A southern reformist, Nguyen Van Linh spearheaded the doi moi (renovation) policy officially moving the country to free market economy. The "modern" South thus replaced the "backward" North.

This unique southern free enterprise spirit did not sit well with Hanoi, which did everything to undermine it and ironically to profit from it at the same time. "Corruption, abuses of power, and administrative incompetence" became the hallmarks of communist Vietnam. However, the free southern spirit traced back to the pionering spirit of the South Vietnamese who settled in the Mekong delta some four centuries ago, lives on. If Saigon lost the war in 1975, it won the peace a decade later. Despite acknowledging past "errors", the communists still refused to release their grip on power.

The author is to be congratulated for his most interesting study and his keen observations of the South Vietnamese mind.

I've been waiting for AGES in anxious anticipation of this book being released, and all that waiting was worth it! French Kitty's second novel is even better than the first one. In this story, French Kitty jets off to Hawaii for the wedding of one of her good friends. She scurries all over the island in search of the perfect wedding present, and finds adventure and romance along the way! I give this book five stars, and I can't WAIT for the next installment!!!

I loved this book, its was the only book i read in the series, but i didnt have to read the books before this one because it was easy to follow!