Hawaii Books

Of Love and War is a fast moving novel based around Pearl Harbor. You experience the attack from several individual perspectives. Once you get into chapter 3 you will find it hard to lay it down.

The research for this book was excellent. I got the feeling that I got an accurate depiction of what went on in Washington as well as Hawaii. Mixing this history into a fictional story made it interesting.

Steve Brown writes with the best of them. His novel, "Of Love and War", is one of the best I have ever read about the 40's and the entrance of the US into WWII. His research is flawless and his characters are real and believable. It is easy to get caught up in this one and hard to put down. I lived through the era and spent 26 years in the military. Looking forward to a sequel.

There is almost something like a signature or a finger print that lets you know that you are reading one of David Walks-As-Bear's novels. His worlds are inter-dimensionally spiritual, mystical and emotionally engrossing. He always takes his readers someplace where the ordinary does not exist. In his world, he lives with one foot in the material world while the other is immersed dreams, visions and his inner senses. He plays with the readers own sense of reality at times. His latest book in a continuing series of classic Ely Stone novels, "Old Money" takes us to even deeper inner depths of this American Indian tribal cop as he explores the Hawaiian Islands were he has been sent by his tribe to investigate land acquired by his tribe.

The story is a strange and interesting blending of that mystical magic of the author's own Indian cultural along with the mysticism of the old ancient Hawaiian beliefs and religion. Added to that mix are some actual historical events which make this book explode with adventure. This gives his storyline a very unique foundation. There is nothing simple or normal in the plot as we dig up and discover connections with Mark Twain, the Civil War, an old Confederate warship ship named the C.S.S. Shenandoah and our hero's many visions and dreams. There is absolutely no way that you have ever read anything like this before, let alone even dreamt about it. This is so fresh and new and full of energy and mystery.

The author's main character in this series is Ely Stone. He has created this man of mystery with some human flaws and inner demons and conflicts. The character is tormented by his visions and dreams but also by his checkered past. His girl friend Nettie Cole back in Michigan, thinks he can kill much too easily for her likes, even though he was in a situation of defending himself. As with all of the author's previous books he is a master of fleshing out the people he writes about. None of them are cardboard characters; he has rogue Muslins, an antiques dealer, major villains and Secret Service agents among others. He also becomes a suspect in several murders.

He uses dialog as a strong bridge that fully supports and gives the reader an understanding and connection to all the action. It is skillfully written and shows the all around writing skills that Walks-As-Bear has. The phrasing is a joy to read as it allows your mind to absorb what is happening or what the setting may be.

This book is like a good jigsaw puzzle and the more you get into it the more you become obsessed on finding those missing pieces to complete the picture. You will want to know what the ship was carrying. There is also a discovery a journal written by Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) which gives details of the location of an unimaginable treasure in Hawaii if true.

It is not a book that you can just sit and read for a few minutes and then pick up days later on. It is best enjoyed in several longer readings where you can become, in an almost Zen like way, one with the book's storyline. This would be a wonderful vacation book to read on a beach in Hawaii, or some other island paradise, or on a cruise, or just in your backyard on a weekend. It is that kind of book.

One interesting side note about this book is that most all of the facts like the ship and Mark Twain are all based on the author's research and are fact based events. It is once again, the twisting together of fact and fiction that makes Walks-As-Bear novels feel so mysterious.

This book receives the MWSA's highest book rating of FIVE STARS! It also gets my personal endorsement.

When I first heard about "Old Money", I was intrigued. Let's see, A retired Coast Guardsman, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, the Civil War Vietnam, and Civil War Warship, Mysticism, Spiritualism and of course Money.

I will admit that I wondered with all of this going on would I get lost in it all and lose interest and put it on a shelf or get caught up in it and not be able to put it down.

It takes a special kind of author to be able to blend several intertwined stories in to one complete package that you keep thinking just a couple more pages then I will go to sleep. David Walks As Bear does this masterfully!
I was going on a week of vacation, hoping to enjoy a couple of good reads. I finished up the first one quickly, So I picked up "Old Money", I bought so I might as well see how David Walks As Bear writes.

After the first 2 or 3 chapters, I found myself wondering where is this all going and simultaneously finding I can't wait to see what happens next.

I wanted it to rain so I could stay in the cabin and continue on my journey with Ely Stone. Alas, no rain so I stayed up way to late turning page after page.

David develops the characters so you could recognize them if you saw them on the street, and some of them if you did recognize them you would probably go in the opposite direction quickly.

Characters; good guys, bad guys, good girls, college professors, secret service agents, Bull Anuenur and of course Amos plus more that you get to know.

Ely Stone himself does not fit well in to a box, parts of Rambo, James Bond, Dirk Pitt and Indiana Jones, but he has a deep soul and you get glimpses in to the inter soul of Ely as the story move along.


I thoroughly enjoyed reading the story and the author in now on my must read list!

I wonder how I can begin to describe this outstanding novel by David-Walks-As-Bear. Inside the covers of this book you will find Tribal Officer Ely Stone, a man with a heart of gold and a life of mystery and adventure, one that is about to embark on another spiritual journey to right the wrongs of the past.
Ely is on another case and you can be sure despite his regrets his ancestors are making known to him by dreams and visions that something must be corrected. We find Ely's true love Nettie still at arms length and are introduced to some new found women friends who add just the right amount of spice to this work.
What does old money have to do with anything? Mark Twain seems to have left a famous writing which may well hold the secret to a fortune and lives will be lost and changed forever as the race is on to make sense of the mystery. Traveling with Ely in his mind we are privy to information that is revealed to him in dreams and vision as Ely struggles to make sense of the picture show that plays within him. We are taken from the past to the present, introduced to men of old who played a pivoted part in the present day affairs and we are favored to meet new characters with interesting personalities and see again those from previous works whom we have come to enjoy.
Let me say this, as with all of David's books this one is no slacker.
It is full of history, mystery, mysticism, adventure, romance and has a just plain down-right great storyline that keeps you glued to the pages from chapter to chapter.
This book is well worth your time, a top-of-the-notch read that will entertain you in every area a good book should. Highly recommended.

As I anticipated this publication on Pacific jewelry and adornment is a striking publication. It is beautifully designed and printed.

There are over 240 high-quality photographs illustrating an awesome selection of objects from around the Pacific. The first class photography reveals the exquisite details of artistry used with various materials - all round this book makes great pacific ornamental reference material.

Enhanced throughout with the superb color images of Auckland-based photographer Krzysztof Pfeiffer, Pacific Jewelry And Adornment is the collaborative work of Roger Neich (Curator of Ethnology, Auckland Museum and Professor of Anthropology, University of Auckland) and Fuli Pereira (Curator of the Pacific Collection, Auckland Museum). This impressively informative work of art history showcases 250 representative examples of traditional jewelry from the Pacific made from the raw materials of jade, whale tooth and bone, shark teeth, tapa, shells, and plant fibers. Insightful information is provided to the use of personal decorative items to reflect power, status and community, as well as their significance with respect to high ceremonial occasions. Drawn from the collections of the Auckland Museum, these illustrative items reflect the vast geographical areas of the Pacific from Micronesia, Papua, New Guinea, and Fiji, to Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands. Pacific Jewelry And Adornment is a strongly recommended addition to any academic or community library Oceanic Culture or Art History collection.

Roger Neich is one of the leading experts in Pacific ethnology with a score of informative and readable books and catalogs to his credit. Pacific Jewelry and Adornment is the most recent addition to his remarkable published work. Incorporating some of the best examples of Pacific Jewelry from the Aukland Museum and other collections, the book provides a concise and detailed overview of the diversity of styles, while outlining the forces of migration and trade that influenced the dispersal of form and material. As an ethnologist who has studied and written on Pacific adornment, I have read pretty much everything there is on the subject, and this book is the single best source. Beautifully illustrated also.

John Van Sant, a professor of Japanese History at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, has written an approachable and engaging look back at some of the very first Japanese travelers to the United States in the mid to late 1800s.

For the student of Asian-American History or Early Modern Asian Japanese History, Pacific Pioneers, is an invaluable reference that bridges the gap between the broad view of early Japan-U.S. interaction and the Japanese political reaction to it. Many of the popular books that deal with this area of history are concerned with its larger events such as the Perry and Iwakura Missions.

Van Sant's book is about individuals who came to a foreign land, and were instrumental in defining how the Western world viewed a recently opened island nation. Van Sant's scholarship is through and compiles a great deal of information that is often lost in the larger events of the period. Even those who aren't interested in Asian or Asian-American History can appreciate the people Van Sant has researched for their sense of wonder and discovery as some of the first to leave their homeland, which was closed off to nearly all foreign intercourse for over 200 years.

I find the book especially engaging because it examines how Americans reacted to their foreign visitors during a time when man of today's stereotypes about the Japanese culture had not been developed. Also, by examining the way in which the New World was viewed by the Japanese visitors, the reader can see how foreigners reacted to the Western world and found their culture to be exotic, captivating, and at times, frightening. The book is a revealing and honest look at how different cultures are viewed by people that were truly foreign to them.

A book I recommend for anyone who is interested in history on a very personal and revealing level.

This is a truly absorbing read. Author John Van Sant casts light on a little-explored corner of American history about which, I'm willing to bet, few readers have any knowledge at all. Some may be vaguely aware that a handful of shipwrecked Japanese sailors fetched up on American shores in the first half of the nineteenth century or that large Japanese embassies toured this country in 1860 and 1871-72. But how many know that scores of Japanese students were living in such an unlikely place as New Brunswick, New Jersey in the late 1860s and 1870s, studying about American institutions as well as "big guns" and "big ships." Or that several young Japanese aristocrats--including a later titan of Meiji Japan--were holed up in a utopian commune, under the watchful eye of an eccentric guru, doing housework and tending grapevines? Or that other countrymen and women of less elevated status, fleeing worsening economic conditions back home, were scraping out a bare living in Hawaii and northern California?

In clear economic prose, thankfully free of academic jargon, Van Sant explores each of these expatriate communities in some depth. (Oddly enough, the author makes no mention whatsoever of the troupes of Japanese entertainers criss-crossing the country during this same period. Even Mark Twain complained bitterly in 1867 about having to compete with a company of Japanese acrobats for an audience.) He also does the historical record a considerable service by freeing some of these pioneers--the "mysterious" Wakamatsu Colony of Gold Hill, California being a prime example--from an encrustation of myth. If I have any quibble at all with Pacific Pioneers, it is that it is too short. Highly recommended!

I think that Dr Van Sant tells a compelling tale of the first wave of Japanese settlers who came to the United States and Hawaii. This book is for anybody who is interested in Asian American History. It should be the first book cracked open for any student who signs up to take any Asian studies class, either in the undergraduate or post-graduate world. I loved it.

I had the pleasure of travelling in Bhutan with my father for 4 months when he was painting some of the work in the book. Shameless plug here for him, I know, but the designer did a wonderful job and the content ain't half bad either. Cheers!

I had the pleasure of travelling in Bhutan with my father for 4 months when he was painting some of the work in the book. Shameless plug here for him, I know, but the designer did a wonderful job and the content ain't half bad either. Cheers!

A Painter's Year In The Forests Of Bhutan by scholar and painter A. K. Hellum is an impressively presented artbook offering unique botanical and visual insights into the flora and culture of the land of Bhutan. Featuring color illustrations of more than 100 rarely seen Bhutanese plants, Hellum's extensive and thoughtful commentary enhances the gentle, museum quality illustrations, and provides the reader with a thoughtful perspective in the form of an exotic giftbook which is most especially recommended for lovers of nature and students of botany.

Dedicated to his grandfather and the community of international radio operators, the book begins in International Morse Code with "May it fall to science to march many steps toward the goal of complete knowledge." Mr. Wilford likely copies CW solid and reveals his belief in structured and objective analysis.

Mr. Wilford's book (and recent peer reviewed journal articles), should be recognized as one of the latest to weigh into the final gasps of the Pearl Harbor debate where clear and bipolar lines are now zealously drawn. It makes extensive use of a broad range of cited documents, some old and many new; primary and secondary materials, American and Allied, and even includes a sworn affidavit. Inconsistencies, even within what are thought to be "primary source documents," are importantly discussed. As a note to the reader, this book presupposes a very detailed appreciation of the many things Pearl Harbor and is not recommended, therefore, for the novice to this subject.

The text derives from Mr. Wilford's award-winning and highly regarded masters thesis (MA in History, University of Ottawa, under the supervision of Professor Brian Loring Villa). Some reference materials within the thesis are not shown in this book.

This is indeed an effort of discipline and sophisticated focus which provides a comparative review of prior Pearl Harbor writings and their respective positions. These are then commented upon applying the now publicly available newer information, notably that gained only after several FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests pried them out into the bright sunlight.

Mr. Wilford offers two conclusions, each logically supported by the combined weight of the evidence supplied (numerous citations are given). They are that: (a) it can be shown that the STRIKING FORCE broke radio silence many times on their voyage to Pearl Harbor and that the USN RDF network and others captured those transmissions, and (b) it can be demonstarted that segments of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Operations Code (variously known as JN25, AN-1, five-numeral, 5Num, JN25B, JN25B7, five figure, five digit ...) were read at some level providing intelligence prior to the Pearl Harbor attack.

Discovered during his research, and mentioned several times via examples in the text, Mr. Wilford points to specific and purposeful gaps in archival materials, continued denial of US Navy RDF documents (e.g., RIP-45 and RIP-213), intercept station chronologies being lost or truncated, ..., etc. This is commented upon at some length as a "pattern" shown now for many decades - a pattern even extending to instances in the Joint Congressional Hearings on Pearl Harbor.

The ending: "The men on Battleship Row deserved a fighting chance." should us give pause and should stir our collective conscience.

This academic study of naval signals intelligence collected before the Pearl Harbor attack provides new answers to an old historical controversy. Combining technical knowledge with historical appreciation, Wilford puts all the evidence on trial and concludes that the Americans, along with their allies, must have had enough signals intelligence to predict a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. However, he refrains from committing himself to an exclusively revisionist view of the controversy. For Wilford, negligence or confusion may have prevented relevant intelligence from being shared with Admiral Kimmel and General Short, although Wilford considers (at length) the conspiracy theory about the Roosevelt administration. Wilford's selection of evidence suggests that he favours the view that Roosevelt let the attack proceed without providing enough advance warning. But Wilford, for academic reasons, seems reluctant to reject the view that relevant signals intelligence was badly mishandled. The reader would find it more satisfying to have a conclusive answer to the controversy, but Wilford approaches his work in an academic way and carefully weighs the evidence.

The book combines archival evidence with secondary accounts to develop new views. Wilford definitely shows that the American Navy was partially reading Japanese naval messages by late 1941, although he cannot show how much was read. He reviews the content of the intercepted messages and discusses possibilities. In a more conclusive section, Wilford shows that American direction finding and radio signals analysis was quite advanced, and argues that the Japanese strike force (Kido Butai) was tracked, owing to its use of inter-ship communications during the voyage to Hawaii. In a section on intelligence reporting, Wilford expands his theme of American "foreknowledge" to Allied "foreknowledge". Wilford quotes from postwar testimonials to build a case showing that the British produced an accurate estimate of Japan's most likely move in the Pacific - an attack on Pearl Harbor. This book will appeal to specialists because of its methodical study of signals intelligence collected before the Pearl Harbor attack, and its appreciation of the historical significance of such intelligence operations.

"Pearl Harbor Redefined" is a scholarly monograph that combines original research, based on new archival sources, with a thoughtful historiographical critique of the topic: pre-Pearl Harbor radio intelligence. In each chapter, the author, Timothy Wilford, contrasts his research with the views of other historians and redefines the Pearl Harbor controversy.

Firstly, Wilford places the Pearl Harbor attack in a broad historical perspective, offering readers a survey of the events that led to a political crisis between the United States and Japan. Secondly, he examines the state of U.S. Navy "cryptanalysis" (code-breaking) in 1941, using contemporaneous primary evidence, concluding that the U.S. had partial reading ability of the principal Japanese Navy Code, and that important information concerning the existence of a Strike Force and some of its plans may have been accessible to American intelligence. Thirdly, Wilford assesses U.S. Navy "traffic analysis", or direction-finding and signals analysis, as a means of providing foreknowledge of Japan's actions in the North Pacific. In this section, Wilford develops a case against the claim of Japanese radio silence and reconstructs the Strike Force communications plan. He also reconstructs the Dec. 3/41 report of Leslie Grogan, based on Grogan's written accounts and Grogan's interviews with historian Ladislas Farago. Fourthly, Wilford looks at U.S. Navy intelligence reporting and Allied intelligence support, producing even more original research concerning British foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, based upon Canadian sources. Finally, he concludes that sufficient radio intelligence existed to predict the Pearl Harbor attack - complete surprise at Pearl Harbor could only have resulted from an enormous failure in intelligence reporting ("gross neglect") or a Washington plan to sacrifice Pearl Harbor to enter WWII ("careful design", Wilford's euphemism for a secret plan or conspiracy).

Wilford's research and interpretation is strikingly original and will appeal to those interested in Intelligence History, Pearl Harbor Historiography, or the Pacific War in general. The general reader should note that this is quite a technical book, dealing at length with the principles of radio communications and intelligence (there are 449 footnotes, and 10 pages of bibliographic sources, many representing newly-released archival material). However, in the book's conclusion, Wilford succeeds at placing his research in a broader perspective, and reflects on the meaning of the "traditionalist" and "revisionist" views, asking some rather poignant questions. "Pearl Harbor Redefined" will likely compel some historians to re-appraise the events that led to the Pacific War.

When the plague came to Kahului on Maui in 1900, the little port village was burned down without fuss, and the sickness was ended.
It was very different in Honolulu on the more populous (though still small) island of Oahu, where the disease arrived somewhat earlier. In "Plague and Fire," University of Oregon historian James Mohr has done a masterly job of sorting out a complicated situation.
The world was -- again -- in the grip of a pandemic in the late 1890s, and the disease hit Hawaii just in the middle of two extraordinary changes, one political, one scientific.
Hawaii had been annexed by the United States, although its Territorial government was not yet organized and the Republic government was still running things.
And scientific doctors were finally about to understand plague. The bacillus had been discovered five years earlier, though the vector, rat fleas, was not proven until around 1905.
People reacted to the outbreak of plague, as they always had, with fear, compassion and opportunism.
Three physicians, Nathaniel Emerson, Francis Day and Clifford Wood, were in a position to react as no one ever had before in the centuries of the Black Death. They were the effective members of the Honolulu Board of Health, and as adherents of the new bacteriological approach to epidemic disease, they felt confident they could eradicate the disease, not merely ameliorate its effects.
It was a brave opinion, as equally modern doctors were failing to do that in places like Hong Kong. Emerson, Day and Wood, however, were given dictatorial powers, and Hawaii's scientifically-minded president, Sanford Dole, insulated them, as much as possible, from political pressures.
For half a year, the doctors ran Honolulu, spending most of the money in the treasury, restricting civil liberties and destroying property.
Though Mohr does not say so, it probably was Honolulu's cosmopolitan conflicts that made success possible.
In Bombay or Hong Kong, scientific medicos were opposed by unified, antiscientific cultures.
In Honolulu, the up-to-date haole (white) doctors were supported by the Japanese doctors, also Western-trained. Emerson, Day and Wood were opposed by most Chinese doctors and by the older, unscientific generation of American and European physicians.
The plague started in Chinatown, a slum housing around 5,000 people, not all Chinese.
Public health measures had to take account of cultural differences. Chinese objected to cremating plague victims as a public health measure, Japanese did not, for example.
The residents of Chinatown had a well-founded suspicion of the motives of the white elites. There were plenty in each community who saw the plague as a commercial opportunity.
The burning of most of Chinatown was not the board's policy, which was to burn individual buildings where plague occurred.
As Mohr says, they might eventually have burned Chinatown lot by lot, but it was a fluke of weather that burned most of it in one day.
Though partly mistaken in its medical theory, the approach had the virtue of working. Deaths were limited to a few score.
Mohr has mined a large store of contemporary documents and, just as informative, the oral tradition of Chinatown that has been diligently recorded by a handful of local historians.
"Plague and Fire" reveals, in its intricacies, a great deal about what Hawaii was like as it entered its modern era; and something about how we came to behave as we do today.

On a single day in 1900, over 5,000 Honolulu residents--nearly all of them living in the Chinatown section--lost their homes and belongings in a fire that swept through the district and destroyed a number of landmarks (including the venerated Kaumakapili Church). Although health officials set the fire, they had meant to contain it to a small set of hovels that had been home to a recent victim of a plague epidemic. The winds shifted and the church steeple caught fire, acting as a torch and sprinkling embers throughout the entire neighborhood. Miraculously, not a single person died in the fire.

Following the debacle, the newly homeless residents were placed in quarantine camps for several weeks, until fears of plague had abated. For decades after, the Chinatown Fire entered Honolulu lore, and some residents never shed the belief that the conflagration had been deliberately set. And not without reason: many local leaders and white-run newspaper editorial boards had been urging that the entire neighborhood be leveled and burned to stem the fearful spread of plague. (In addition, despite native resistance, the white community was working to make the recently annexed Hawaii a territory of the United States.) Although James Mohr's valuable, readable, and well-researched book examines the racial, class, and imperial politics that fueled the debate over what to do about the plague epidemic, he ultimately exonerates the motives of the health authorities for setting the fire.

But he has a larger purpose than showing that the fire was merely a well-intended public policy gone awry. He describes how officials responded to the medical emergency of the plague and, more specifically, he details the unprecedented powers granted to a trio of doctors appointed to respond to the crisis. The doctors were given complete authority over police and governance functions, as well as the treasury, until four weeks after the last confirmed case of plague. From this narrative emerge three heroes: Nathaniel Emerson, Francis Day, and Clifford Wood, all graduates of American medical schools who had emigrated to Hawaii, who had served extensively as public health officers, who had little previous political experience, and who ruined their own health and nearly destroyed their careers by accepting the assignment.

Because of the efforts of this trio, Honolulu's Plague of 1900 was far less severe than it might have been otherwise. Mohr does not claim that their methods were perfect or that their motives were uninfluenced by prejudice; instead he concludes that, given their limited medical knowledge (particularly concerning how plague infection was communicated), their policies were remarkably humanitarian and effective. Furthermore, they stubbornly resisted the "racist desires of the Citizens' Sanitary Commission, of many white businessmen, and of the traditional physicians in their own medical community," and, under extraordinary strain, implemented measures that were, for their time, sensitive both to the needs of the poor who lived in the affected neighborhood and, later, to the well-being of the homeless who were placed in the quarantine camps. While stopping short of suggesting that emergency powers during health catastrophes might be surrendered to medical authorities, Mohr certainly makes the case that selfless, politically neutral professionals might be capable of responsible and responsive governance during times of crisis, particularly when such powers are granted with clearly defined limits.

The Boston Globe gave it a rave review (Nov. 18, 2004) and it's well deserved. Recommended reading for anyone interested in U.S. history, medicine, public health, or legal history. Travelling to Hawaii? Take this along and see a very different side of paradise!

An interesting and intimate account of a woman discovering her dream and then remaining focused on it, until she fianlly achieves it,.. overcoming along the way, many challenges and heartbreaks in her personal and family life. It includes many valuable life lessons, and principles of success. This book was an inspiration to me!

I love this book!! Although I am not an athlete I found the author's story very fascinating and inspiring. You don't need to be an athlete to understand her message: Everything is possible if you believe in yourself.

I can only recommend this book!!

This book is all about believing in yourself and achieving goals. It is a well written story of an ordinary woman who's life had many extra challenges. She found ways to overcome the difficult things that came her way and showed that anything is possible. Her life takes several exciting and interesting paths! She is a inspiration to others especially to athletes!

He's Sam Choy, he cooks great Hawaiian food, and now he shows us how. What more can I say?

Well bound and with hearty paper stock, this book is made for the cook who wants to try some of the best Island recipes without having to learn how to dig a pit for Kalua pork. Sam has taken some of his best recipes, his old standards, from poke to sweet and sour (mmm!), his opah and his spicy soups, and placed them into one very easy to use book.
Again, Sam's at his best when he is explaining what the ingrediants and preparation process is, as well as giving lively history and substiution ingrediants for those of us without a nearby market. The back even has some ingrediant stores to get supplies from.
There's no downside to this book, other than than you could spend $... on his other books (some of which are fantastic- Seafood and poke for example) to get some of the best recipes which are all compiled in one easy to use place.
The recipes are all gems, which happens when you cull over 500 recipes into his best and easiest 80. If you could only buy one Hawaiian cookbook, this would be the one. And then you need to save up to buy some of his other cookbooks. It is a wonderful gift, and I am buying another to give to my island hungry friends.

Well Done, Sam, Very ono!

I bought this book while in Hawaii and immediatly made three dishes. All were wonderful. Not only did I love them, but my kids did too. Fancy finding a salad dressing that will get a six-year-old to gobble up his salad!!. The Huli Huli Chicken and Sweet and Sour Pork are worth the price of the book. I am so impressed that I will buy another Sam Choy cookbook. By the way, his restaurant in Kona is great as well!

Sharks of Hawaii: Their Biology and Cultural Significance, by Leighton R. Taylor, is a great book on Hawaii's sharks. The book includes information on individual species of sharks (with line drawings and photographs), information on the relationship between Hawaiians and sharks (including the concept of 'aumakua, and fishing techniques), modern conservation concerns, and a good summary of shark biology.

The book also has a detailed listing of the Hawaii shark attack file maintained by NOAA scientist George Balazs.

"Pau pele, pau mano." Tell the truth or be subjected to the perils of volcanos and sharks.

If you read much at all about sharks, you encounter so many contradictions that it's obvious some authors are talking through their hats. It's fair to say that Dr. Leighton Taylor wears his -- former director of the Waikiki Aquarium, taxonomist who was called to write the species description of the Megamouth shark when it was discovered, veteran of many research efforts in the North Pacific.
A man who knows enough to know which questions are best left open.
The sharks of Hawaii are political animals. The natural history, while it still contains many mysteries, is the easy part.
Here Taylor is admirable, if brief. 'Sharks of Hawaii' has three kinds of illustrations -- color photographs, outline drawings and 10 paintings by Michael Cole. Cole paints plausible versions of natural events never observed by anybody.
So, for example, this book takes a thorough look at the cookiecutter shark, one of the mysteries of the deep. It was only recently that this little shark's mode of life was deduced.
It nips a bite out of bigger fish or mammals with its specially adapted teeth. Researchers still don't understand now the rather flabby, small-finned and obviously slow cookiecutter manages to get close enought to fast moving prey such as ahi (yellowfin tuna) to get a meal.
'Freshly caught specimens glow a ghostly green,' writes Taylor. 'Perhaps the cookiecutter attracts prey with the green glow and then ambushes the would-be predator.'
The little nightmare is widely distributed but not known to have ever attacked a live human in the water, in Hawaii at least.
Of the hundred or so known cases of sharks biting people in the islands, some of whom were probably already dead from other causes (like drowning), only two species are pretty surely implicated: the tiger shark and perhaps great white sharks, although the latter are rare around Hawaii.
To put it in perspective, the most dangerous sea creature in Hawaii is the opihi, a limpet about two or three inches across. Several people drown each year while collecting opihi, while fatal shark attacks seldom exceed one a year.
There is much still to be learned about Hawaii's sharks, and not just for the pure pleasure of knowing.
Taylor is commendably frank about pointing out where the areas of ignorance lie. 'Terms such as "the shark" and "sharks" are general to the point of vagueness. Careless use of such indefinite terms can be misleading . . . .It is careless, inaccurate, and perhaps even irresponsible for modern commentators to make such imprecise statements as "sharks are sacred to Hawaiians" and "Hawaiians did not kill sharks" or "sharks were important food for Hawaiians."
'Such statements are true for some species, but we are by no means certain which species match which Hawaiian names.'
'Sharks of Hawaii' is a nicely balanced book: respectful, well-informed, well illustrated and politically incorrect.

This book was a true surprise. After being disappointed with the lack of literature on sharks (especially for the hawaii area), I was very happy to have stumbled onto this book. The amount of depth into the cultural significance of sharks in the hawaiian culture was astounding. It also had a good deal of icthiology and marine science information. I reccomend it to anyone interested in the history and cultures of hawaii, or to anyone looking for a good book on sharks.