Oceania Books

Initially I was worried this book might be a polemic. However, it is not. In fact, despite the title, I found the book to be a reasonably balanced account of Freeport's involvement in Indonesia and a comprehensive history. The book breaks it down into subjects such as business dealings, human rights, development, environment, etc. The author does seem to try to give Freeport credit and the benefit of the doubt when it is due. However, the picture she paints is appropriately depressing.

A must for students of Indonesian studies, development, or corporate social responsibility.

This book was absloutly amazing. It may have been the best book i have ever read. It gave my many great ideas for my trip to fiji next year. I liked fiji so much from reading this book that I feel like I've already been there.

This is a delightful & wonderful work about a remarkable adventure: exploring Australia's Outback (and Infront) armed with rosined bows, microphones, and cameras...like a National Geographic production on Aesthetic Steroids. Jon Rose's photos and vids are enchanting. Hollis Taylor's narrative is rich, literate, allusive, evocative...superbly written, in short. If you are familiar with their music CD "Great Fences of Australia" this book/DVD is a must-have, it's the full behind-the-music report of that project. But if you're not, it's likely that this book/DVD will lead you to experience the mysterious & beautiful sounds on the CD. Highly recommended.

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.

This book is a must for anyone interested in Sino-India relations. It chronologically analysizes the relations/events between modern China and India upto the late 1990's and mainly covers military and political aspects. It's interesting to read the Chinese view points and policies though understandably overall more of the Indian perceptions are explained.

The author John Garver has done a thorough job and I was suprised the the in-depth information on all important issues. References to Sardar Patel as leader 'realpolitik', failures of Indian diplomacy to garner support inspite of supporting democratic insistitutions/values in the region, China playing the Pakistan card to achieve higher status, India's sphere of influence v/s China's tributary status in the region, reasons for Sino-Soviet split are some of the few.

Now with post-Deng China attaining great economic progress and slowly abandoning its belligerent Maoist policies, it would be good to see if it can sustain this level of progress without social change and freedom. At the same time India's bureaucratic and dysfunctional democratic system needs a lot of catching up to do if it wants to reduce the progress gap with China. The opening of the Nathu-La pass, the Qinghai-Tibet railway, fierce competition for global energy resourses etc.; these two Asian giants are getting more interactive leading to rivalalry with few instances of cooperation. Like John Garver says that unless India is willing to become a junior partner of China in the emerging world order, we may further see Sino-Indian rivalry in the 21st century.

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!

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.

Judith Binney teaches history at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and has written a brilliant and monumental biography of Te Kooti, a Maori guerilla leader and (above all) prophet who lived in nineteenth-century New Zealand. American readers will probably have little awareness of the complexity and fascination of nineteenth century New Zealand history and may find the world the book describes bewildering and unfamiliar at first.

Te Kooti came from the East Coast of the North Island and was wrongfully exiled to a penal colony for a crime he didn't commit. Later he escaped from the island, returned home and led a force of Maori _whakarau_ (exiles) into the heart of the North Island. The government forces never succeeded in capturing him. Te Kooti had many enemies, Maori and Pakeha, and the complexity of the Maori world at this time is brilliantly conveyed. The book is very strong on Te Kooti as a religious leader and prophet and is methodologically extremely interesting as well. I don't agree with every detail of the story, but that is only to be expected in a work of such richness and scope. American readers and scholars interested in the interaction between colonial empires and indigenous peoples will gain most from this book, which compares in many ways with Noel Mostert's _Frontiers_ or Roger Milliss' _Waterloo Creek_.

I am a saltwater aquarist that is in love with the coral reef and the ocean. I absolutely treasure this book. The detail and time spent to create this is intense. What a magnificent piece of work! Before I go to work, I poor a cup a coffee and browse through the pages a little at a time and think how much I'd rather be tracking these intresting and intrensic species that the ocean has to offer.

I work with the government in Indonesia from time to time on financial matters. Very often, things that happen here are not understandable - parties start acting in ways that seem to run counter to our assessment of the situation. This book provided a level of detail and enough history so that, all of a sudden, seemingly arbitrary acts by gov't officals started making sense. I think that is the strongest compliment I can pay to this book.

It covers the politics, scandals and events from the tail end of Suharto to the election of Megawati. I think his assessment of the future is a little too gloomy, but his description of the past has been eagerly read by the Indonesian nationals I work with - most of whom hadn't ever gotten a full explanation of that time period.