Hawaii Books

A superbe and well researched book that not only covers the history of the lines and the ships, but the people and even economics as well. To go along with a flowing and interesting text, there are numerous photographs, maps, ship plans as well as photos of actual schedules, rate cards, and even charts of accounts.

Definitely not dry, the book is thoroughly readable and a lot of fun for anyone interested in either shipping or commercial evolution of Hawaii.

I had no idea that so much fascinating information about death and the afterlife could be gleaned from ancient Chinese manuscripts. The author does an amazing job of reconstructing actual religious practice. Also makes great connections to Buddhist philosophy and rituals that are important everywhere in the Buddhist world.

My grandson absolutely loves this series. I get a new one every time he comes for a visit and he can never wait to start hearing the stories. (He's just starting second grade and can't yet read them himself.)

Lee Roddy's books are never in-your-face religious (characters go to church and pray briefly in emergencies) but they're wholesome as well as being action-packed page turners. I highly recommend them. Secret of the Shark Pit (The Ladd Family Adventure Series #1)

This is a book that anyone interested in writing from Asia and the Pacific ought to read. Insightful, engaging, and a complete pleasure. Includes a great collection of Korean women writers.

I have taken three different Indoensian language classes, and this book is unequivocally the best.

This book contains a series of interviews conducted from a socialogical point of view, with patients hospitalized at Kaulapapa Leper colony. No doubt, many of the patients are dead now, since the interviews took place several years ago and the population is an aging one. Many of the stories, in fact all of the stories are heartwrenching. Children with leprosy taken from the arms of their parents, husbands separated from their wives, brothers and sisters never to see each other, despite the promises. They were exiled to a forgotton life. I became interested in their story after visiting Kaulapapa and seeing the guilded cage. As beautiful as Molokai's Kaulapapa is, it is as isolated and sad. To stand amid 7000 unmarked graves compelled me to hear their story. I lent my book to someone and haven't gotton it back so I am on line ordering another.

Moke Kupihea is a Native Hawaiian who grew up on the island of Kaua'i at a time when it still truly was the Garden Island. His stories of his childhood and young adulthood spent with kupuna (elders) is fascinating. He was fortunate to know several who passed on their wisdom to him.

Anyone who has spent anytime on Kaua'i will love his descriptions of the aina, the land. He describes in vivid detail his treks through Waimea and beyond. His narratives of his long journeys help us to begin to understand that the way Hawaiians think about land and spirituality is fundamentally different than the way they are thought of in Western civilization. His spirituality springs from a closeness to the land that few of us can ever hope to have. The land is almost literally his mother, his nurturer, his guardian.

He describes mystical experiences that even in the re-telling give the reader chicken skin.

As the editor of Na Mo'olelo Lomilomi: Traditions of Hawaiian Massage and Healing, I was blessed to receive permission from Moke to quote from this book a delightful description of the making of Hawaiian salt.

This book is a must for anyone interested in Hawaiian spirituality from a Native Hawaiian perspective.

One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel To see and read about what is living in the Hawaii waters....fascinating...beautiful photography...

This collection of articles constitutes by far the best, most reliable general historical treatment of Shinto that I know of, and in overall quality is on a par with Helen Hardacre's excellent "Shinto and the State, 1868-1988" (which of course deals in depth with a more specific time period). This is good, solid, critical scholarship that plies the middle course between the Scylla of ahistorical, essentialist, culturally nationalist fuzz and the Charybdis of politicized, deconstructive, debunking wrath. Not that the contributors don't have a point to make, but they do so without sermonizing (one way or the other); their primary interest is in shedding some much needed light and clarity on the many fascinating and important aspects of the traditions we call "Shinto" today, spanning the seventh to twentieth centuries in the process. And I have already seen a number of these articles cited in books and academic journals, so this promises to be an influential set of studies. Most of these articles are original to this book, while some are translations from Japanese journals appearing in English here for the first time. If you are interested in Japanese religion generally or Shinto specifically, you won't want to miss out on this hefty volume, and those into Japanese history should also find it useful.

Note: I've appended a list of this book's sixteen articles below in the ProductWiki section.

This book gives a good description of the Shishu(Japanese Embroidery)Ladies of Hilo. It explains about the cultural bonding of these ladies and family memebers. The embroidery designs was adapted to include the Hawaiian culture since Hilo is on the Big Island of Hawaii. The pictures displayed in the book are excellent and colorful showing the details in the actual stitching. I attended a few of these classes with my grandmother as a child and I feel this book brings back many of those colorful memories. The pictures brings back memories of watching these ladies working on their embroidery.