Hawaii Books

While visiting Hawaii, I bought this book for my 12-year-old son. I decided to read it also. It was excellent. Certainly, it was a fun adventure story, but the thing that made it stand out from the rest was the wealth of Hawaiian terms that are woven into the story. There is even a dictionary in the back, although most of the words' definitions are also carefully woven into the story. My son is hoping for a sequel!

This is not a plant picture book - it's meant to be used. So much so that it comes with a chapter named "Words of Warning." The first part of the book covers tools and techniques for gathering, transporting and preparing Hawaiian plants, including using the modern version of the Hawaiian O`O (digging stick). Following that is a chart of what plants grow at what elevations (I've never seen one like it anywhere else). The next (and largest) section is an alphabetical listing of 54 major medicinal plants (one page each) with descriptions, comments and drawings. The only negative is that the plant drawings aren't in color - readers will probably want a supplemental plant guidebook to help with plant identifications. The final section is an alphabetical listing of ailments that the plants can be used to cure, AND complete instructions on how to prepare and use them.

I wouldn't hesitate to use this book at all for my personal health. I didn't know that awa would stop a headache cold (it does) until I read it here. The author has been interested in medicinal plants since childhood and obviously believes in them. At the same time he is realistic and doesn't hesitate to point out when modern medicine works better (like aspirin for fever reduction, for example). If you live in the islands, you need this book near your medicine cabinet! It's great.

A truly excellent scholarly study like Janine Sawada's "Practical Pursuits" is a treasure indeed. First of all, each chapter is full of a wealth of new knowledge and information. Religious movements and traditions previously unknown or at best understudied are explored here with much original research and hard work in rare and well-nigh inaccessible sources. I've studied Japanese religions for a long time now, and I can't say I've even heard of some of the fascinating Edo-period divinatory and purificatory systems discussed earlier in the book. As for the Meiji forms of Zen Buddhism developed at Engakuji Temple of which I was somewhat aware, this book goes into amazingly great depth and analysis. In short, if you like learning something new, you'll definitely get your money's worth on that score alone.

But there's much more to this book, too. All this wonderful variety of detail is held together by a common theme, the discourse of personal spiritual cultivation underlying these diverse religious forms. This is a compelling approach that successfully transcends compartmentalizing the traditions as separate and unrelated entities (for Sawada convincingly demonstrates that they don't operate that way) while not glossing over the distinctive vocabularies and approaches of each. Furthermore, a key concern of Sawada's research here as a historian is the complex political ramifications (primarily but not exclusively "conservative") of this religious paradigm of self-cultivation, but she deftly avoids the tendency to be reductive here and keeps in view the spiritual significance and meaningfulness of this paradigm and its practices to those whose ideas and beliefs she describes and analyzes.

The overall result is a well-balanced, finely nuanced, and (most of all) intensely interesting study, one that should by rights exert a great influence on the way Japanese religions are conceptualized. If you liked Sawada's prior book, "Confucian Values and Popular Zen", then you'll find that in many ways this book picks up where that one left off but also moves beyond it. And if you are at all interested in Japanese religions, especially their modern vicissitudes, or in Meiji intellectual history more generally, then you absolutely should not go without this fine book.

Having lived from the 40s to the present in Hawaii, this made me remember what it was really like then. Remember the dock strikes and the racial prejudices? A must for Hawaii history buffs.

I had to write an economics paper, and one particular chapter was very helpful for me. The chapters were all editorials on different aspects of the finances of living in Hawaii. They are very throughough and appear to be accurate. The dialog is easy to read, and there are amusing cartoons. It is a fun and easy book to explore if you want this sort of information. The topics are interesting, which I didn't think was possible since the overall subject is economics. Overall, interesting and informative.

a very untertaining and interesting book, full of insights and original ideas.
Japanese authorities and Dutch sailors played an amazing game of diplomacy when wrongs were transformed in benefactions and ambassadors sent to dye and be embalmed
The best introduction ever to the first contacts between Europeans and Japanese

There are a few books out there which are supposedly about interactions between physical humans and `discarnate' entities, but very few have the ring of truth about them. This book is different. Not only does Morag Campbell let you know the real consequences of living immortal beings becoming part of her life, but also something about how they themselves lived all those years ago on a very remote island - a region of the world that many of us are unfamiliar with. It is a real insight into their lives and their ways, which confirms what some of us have always suspected - it was never easy!

The results are not only the completion of `unfinished business' from an ancient time and place, but also the introduction of a teaching back to the earth that had remained entirely secret and unknown until now. You may know this teaching as Huna Mua, but not the reasons for it appearing again. This book will complete the picture for you.

Morag Campbell has written a first hand account of what happened to her, her life, and her relationships as a consequence. But more than this it is an account of how life was for a Kahuna from a bygone era; something about which there was no first hand account until now.

You won't have read this kind of book before, and you won't forget it. Thoroughly recommended.

After trying to secure this book through Barnes and Nobles, I was told that there would be a delay on the shipment date. That would just simply not work as it was a present for a friend, so I turned to reliable Amazon. As a Peace Corps Volunteer from the South Pacific, I try to read as many books about that region of the world as possible, but it is often extremely difficult to find books about the South Pacific. This is a great find. Thanks!

My god, the Queen of Hawaii, the President of the United States, and a warrior on the warpath, aimed on his odd political comet streaking blindly, messing with the fate of the country--both countries, the Republic of Hawaii and the U.S. He was unwilling to stick it out, to get under control, on a mission. She was in her moment, out of time. The President was done. Good story, quick read, try it.

Ever since the time of Captain Cook, Europeans have been fascinated with Polynesian origins. Where did they come from? How did they get here? Were others here before them? By studying Polynesian society, Europeans could get an insight into their own neolithic origins, and thus come to a better understanding of their own psyche.

Professor Howe reviews the latest findings of archaeologists, linguists, ethno-botanists, and physical biologists. These confirm that Captain Cook got it about right: the ancestors of the peoples of Polynesia came down from China, honing their skills as they went, in horticulture, boat-building, inter-island trading and ocean navigation. And a drastic selection process developed them into big, strong, hardy populations who could cope with long ocean voyages.

But Polynesian oral tradition adds little light on this pre-history; Howe says those traditional stories have more to do with legitimising the present situation of the speaker than with objectively retelling the past.

And this is where Howe's book becomes really interesting: he is not an anthropologist but a professor of history (at Auckland's MUA), and his book is a history of all the theories that have been put forward by Europeans in the past 200 years, both those backed by hard evidence, and also the theories based on psychological need, cultural conditioning and prejudice.

Early missionaries saw the peoples of Polynesia as Semitic, remnants of a Lost Tribe of Israel, degenerate but redeemable. Later in the 19th century, mythologists connected South Sea nature myths with Germanic ones and proclaimed an Aryan origin for Polynesians. And in the early 20th century came diffusionists. They postulated that civilization had only ever emerged once, in Egypt, and diffused to South-east Asia and then Polynesia, deteriorating as it went.

Then showman-adventurer Thor Heyedahl "proved" that the Pacific had been populated from Egypt via South America. (It could have been too, if the South Americans had been able to hire diesel tugboats to tow their rafts like Heyerdahl did!). And "New Age" dreamers have resurrected old ideas that the Pacific Islands are the remnants of the sunken continent of Mu, and that Polynesians the remnants of the great civilization that flourished on it.

Howe shows the irrationality of these anti-intellectual fantasies, and analyses them to reveal a pattern of colonialist ideology in most of them. Just like the old Polynesian story-tellers, the colonists are more concerned with legitimising their present situation than with objectively retelling the past.

The book's cover illustration is a perfect example of this colonialist propaganda: with Goldie and Steele's "Arrival of the Maori," a highly offensive parody of Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa," portraying incompetent Polynesian voyagers being washed up on New Zealand's shores by chance, unlike the superior Europeans.

Comprehensive and up-to-date, but concise and readable, and with a huge bibliography, "The Quest for Origins" is an essential guide not only to New Zealand's distant past, but also to its anti-intellectual present.