Oceania Books

Peter's journey throughout the Pacific, following in the footsteps of the travelling Polynesians, takes you far and wide across the vastness of the ocean. Excellently written and divided into easily negotiated sections, you can see in stages, how the islands came to be inhabited.

The pictures are breathtaking although the maps of the Pacific and individual islands look a little cheap and could have been more detailed for the price of the book.

Particularly poignant is the story of the most remote spot on earth, namely "Rapa Nui" or Easter Island. This strange tale tells how the island was populated and then brought about it's own extinction, leaving the eerie Moai figures staring out across the sea for all eternity.

A beautifully written piece of work, that I would recommend any arm chair traveller to read.

When I read this book I was looking for a detailed account of the natural history of the south pacific-the people, cultures, places, maps, archaeology, geology, biogeography, and so on. This book is very good, but not by any means exhaustive-its 11 chapters provide a useful overview of natural history, initial polynesian and then European discovery, and the various cultures of the Tahitian islands (chapters 1-2), the Fijian group (3), the Tongan group (4), a chapter on polynesian seafearing (5), the story of Fletcher Christian and the Bounty Mutineers (6), the Cook Islands (6), the Marquesas Islands (6-7), Easter Island (8), European Impact (9), Hawaii (9), New Zealand (10), and the future (11).

A strong point is the beautiful colour photographs and cultural depictions, however a notably weak point is the poorness of the maps. Often it is difficult to tell which islands belong to which particular "group" from the text, and the maps don't help in this respect-they are very simplisitic and look hand-drawn. These maps are in stark contrast to the beauty and extravagance of the colour photos of various wildlife, vistas and aerial photographs.

One of the best chapters is that on Easter Island with its stone statues, general cultural and natural history and subsequent decline. It is a little brief, but I found the archaeological accounts of it the islands cultural downfall particularly interesting. Basically, the ruling religious class (hanau eepe) are overthrown by a warrior class (matatoa) after the resource base of the island, and the cultural structure which depended on it, collapsed. By the time Europeans arrived in the 17th and 18th centuries, the island was already in warfare and decline.

Typical useful snippets include the taro root being found to contain natural flouride complexes by western science, which was discovered after someone researched why the polynesians seemed to have such good teeth. After the connection was made, flouide was routinely introduced into toothpaste/water in western societies. The New Zealand Maoris had no pigs or chickens, unlike other polynesians, probably because they were substituted by the now extinct Moa as a food source, after they first arrived in New Zealand. The presence of the sweet potatoe and other South American oddities suggests some natural or cultural influx from South America-either with seafarers from the east, by natural currents and winds (eg some lizards on Fiji, and South American trees on Easter Island), or by the polynesians themselves who may have reached South America, but never settled there. Another bit of trivia is on page 84-it is an aerial colour shot of the island where Tom Hanks was marooned in the movie "Castaway".

Overall quite a useful overview of the natural history of Polynesia, and beautifully illustrated, but not presented in any exhaustive detail.

Mr Fitzpatrick has researched this topic well, as one would expect, and produced a book which will be of immense help to researchers and family historians.

With an Irish/Australian family background, I found the book very helpful in putting a detailed perspective on the privations of the Irish Immigrants, and those left behind in the homeland.

The book is not a light read. But it is very readable.

PS. I wish the publisher had bound the book as well as the author/editor had written it. Be careful. It will fall apart if opened wide!

Oceans of Consolation is a collection of 111 letters written between 1843 and 1906 to and from members of 14 families of Irish immigrants to Australia. The collections were gathered and the book is edited by David Fitzpatrick, an associate professor of Modern History and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.

The letters are augmented by profiles on each of the families written from genealogical, biographical and historiographical sources that give context to the letters and by six themed chapters in which Fitzpatrick analyzes the letters and the general subject of Irish emigration.

The author claims his work is distinguished from similar collections of Irish emigrant correspondence by its focus on "the forgotten vernacular of the steerage classes." In other words, Fitzpatrick aims to give insight into the Australian migration experience of Ireland's lower economic classes.

The book includes a Preface and an introductory first chapter explaining the method of the work. The Introduction is required reading if one is to have a thorough understanding of the many aspects of the author's complicated research method that yields what one well-published Australian historian calls a "showpiece."

The sets of letters penned by members of the 14 families are organized into chapters in four groups: News from Australia with three chapters of letters and associated family profiles; Victorian Voices containing profiles and letters to/from members of five families; News from Home, with letters and profiles of three families; and Ulster Accents with similar content on and by three families.

Six chapters of analysis follow the 14 family profile / letter chapters. Fitzpatrick includes these commentaries to explore "a formidable range of issues in the history of Ireland, Australia and human migration." It is in these 160 pages where Fitzpatrick meets his obligation as an interpreter of history. While the letters are valuable insight into the Irish-Australian migrant experience - they permit the reader to "hear" the idiom of the writers, thus to know them better as individuals - the meat of interpretation and historical value lies in the final six chapters.

A List of Sources and a Thematic Index complete the 649-page book.

Readers should be aware the Index is difficult to use. In a regrettable omission, the author and his editors fail to include page numbers for the key word references. Instead they are identified with a "letters-number-letter" sequence: a two-letter abbreviation of the family name; a number designating the specific piece of correspondence in which the word, phrase or reference is to be found; and an alphabetical letter identifying the pertinent paragraph in the specific letter. If one is to use the Index, this reader-unfriendly method forces one to memorize the abbreviations of the family names, then to plod tediously through the book to find the citation. The effort is often unjustified by the return.

Fitzpatrick's goal is to discover how the written word sustained solidarity among lower-class 19th Century Irish families separated from their emigrant relatives by the mighty ocean distance between Ireland and Australia. He also claims to reveal the differences between Ireland and Australia and what he calls "the very nature of Irishness."

Because of his complex research method and reliance on "letters of the unlettered," there is little doubt this book was difficult to produce. With commendable candor, Fitzpatrick confesses his need for "the courage to complete what sometimes seemed an impossible assignment." He apparently wishes he'd been more disciplined either in defining his scope or pursuing it. Regardless, Oceans of Consolation is a tour de force.

Fitzpatrick consulted an extensive list of sources, both individual and institutional. He expresses his gratitude to descendents of the correspondents whose letters are included in the book. He is equally grateful to numerous institutional sources and individual specialist scholars in Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. His long list of institutional sources included public and university libraries, archives, museums, offices of public records, church registers, Catholic religious orders and Protestant fraternal organizations.

Fitzpatrick discusses the twin challenges of distance and delay that confronted Irish-Australian families in their correspondence written, he says, to "reinforce the emigrant's fading link with `home'." Both had much greater impact on the new Aussie family than on families of Irish émigrés to other lands, notably England and North America.

Four letters written by Michael Hogan between 1853 and 1857 to his brother Mathew, a cooper and publican in County Tipperary, are the subject of Chapter Five and illustrative of the book's content. As in all the letter collections, the editor's impressively researched and well-written family profile precedes them.

Fitzpatrick tells us Michael Hogan, the only convict immigrant featured in the book, arrived at Port Jackson, Australia on the good ship, "Blenheim" from Cork on Nov. 14, 1834 after being convicted of "maiming" at the Cashel Quarter Sessions in January, earlier that year.

Fitzpatrick refers to the Clonmel Herald to describe the charge against him. "Hogan's violent assault on James Kinnealy had been unprovoked and no motive could be assigned for it by the prosecutor. The principal witness in the case was a little girl of about eight or ten years of age, whose testimony was as artless as convincing."

Fitzpatrick uses Blenheim's "printed convict indent," the penal system's answer to a passenger list or cargo manifest, to introduce us to Michael. He is described as "an unmarried, literate, Catholic `farm laborer' aged 27 years, just over 5 feet 6 inches tall; with a `dark ruddy freckled' complexion, brown hair, bluish eyes and `scar top of left side of forehead, top joints of both little fingers crooked.'"

After receiving his "ticket of leave" - his release - a year early in 1840, Michael Hogan married Margaret O'Brien, also formerly of Tipperary, who bore him seven children. Michael worked at several jobs, bought a freehold house (the house plus the land on which it sits) in south Melbourne, sent his brother two checks of £30 each and referred in his letters to the presence in his house of several servants. His self-image revealed in his letters "was that of a man who had made good," writes Fitzpatrick, "and wished this to be recognized." Michael died in 1873, a widowed laborer who had earned the means to have buried his wife and two of his sons in an eight-foot square grave plot in Melbourne's Old Cemetery.

Thus the reader arrives at the actual letters with an appreciation of the background and personality of their writers. Fitzpatrick's well researched and artfully crafted family stories bring life to the letters, thereby enhancing the reader's experience and raising the historical value of the work.

Fitzpatrick suggests lower class Irish-Australian correspondents often seem to have sought help to write their letters. "Help" means reference to letter-writing manuals, plagiarism of friends' letters and dictation of desired messages to more accomplished - maybe even professional - letter writers. Among many common elements, Fitzpatrick cites the frequency of elaborate, identical salutations and Irish-Australian expressions of intimacy resembling "those recommended in manuals for `the juvenile correspondent'."

He says one might presume this style was quintessentially Irish, but he turns to an English manual published in 1856 to verify it conformed closely "to the general base of letter-writing as practiced by uneducated persons." In other words, there's nothing special in this fact; the same characteristic would have been true, for example, of lower class Irish in North America and England. This is the case with many of Fitzpatrick's observations: perhaps pertinent to Irish emigrants in general, but not unique to the history of Irish-Australian migration.

As is the case for economists, political scientists and sociologists, it's important for historians to focus on statistically significant data and avoid wasting effort where the knowledge is less valuable. With this in mind, Fitzpatrick spends too much time in his analyses at the 50th percentile of interpretation. For example, he writes "The letters illustrate eagerness and reluctance to emigrate in roughly equal measure" and "Advice concerning the prospects for future emigrants, when directive, was as often discouraging as encouraging." These letters are obviously not a statistically valid sample of all Irish-Australian migrant correspondence. Nevertheless, it would be preferable for this editor - and all historians, in this reviewer's opinion - to focus on attitudes and feelings shared by at least 75 percent of his sample. It is at the poles of the semantic differential where the most meaningful learning is to be found.

Fitzpatrick wanders frequently from his Irish-Australian thesis in his six commentaries. He writes extensively about the Irish emigrant experience per se, but often fails to drill down into any geographical destination. He spends time on conditions in Ireland, but often doesn't link his topic either to the families of emigrants or emigrants themselves. He occasionally slips away to citations about Irish emigrants to North America without comparing or contrasting the parallels with their Australian cousins.

Perhaps because they are written as summaries, the final two chapters contain several more specific Irish-Australian examples of the emigration experience, important because they support Fitzpatrick's objective. Here are two of many:

* It was the rough life of the outback, bush, homestead, or diggings which engrossed those trying to imagine Australia from Ireland.

* Emigrant letters gave Irish readers graphic accounts of the unfamiliar Australian climate, with its bewildering succession of floods, frosts and fires and above all its summer heat.

History professor Patrick O'Farrell of the University of New South Wales is quoted in "The Sydney Morning Herald" on his reaction to Oceans of Consolation.

"I am humbled by what Professor Fitzpatrick has done so exhaustively and so well . . . It would be hard, if not impossible, to better his treatment of the exercise he has undertaken; this is a showpiece, a master class, in the handling of a certain type of historical source."

Judith Reid of the Library of Congress says the book is definitely "an important acquisition for libraries collecting Irish and Australian history and emigration history."

Professor Fitzpatrick has produced a Herculean contribution to the history of the Irish-Australian emigration experience in Oceans of Consolation. We trust he has enough energy left for other work of equally high value that will add to the body of knowledge on the subject. At the least, we hope he got some rest after this one. He earned it!

This is a good book to start with if you want to expose yourself to different methods of rapid weight loss. If you are a fan of fruits and vegetables, this may be a really good book to look into because a lot of the strategies involve these specific foods as the basic foundation. It's a good way to segue into a better way of eating for health and fitness. I would suggest also that anyone interested in a weight reduction program be cautious with any method that they use, but this may be a sound beginning for those seeking change.

I bought this book years ago and recently picked it up again. There is nothing hard or challenging in it. It is a good 'food' for thought book. I'm recommending it to all of my family. It offers a lot of variety

I learnt of this book from a friend in London -- it is an excellent history of race and British imperialism. The author has a very impressive breadth of knowledge and writes clearly. I really liked the material on India, especially on Sikhism. It is nice to read a British historian who takes religion seriously and who read Indian sources. The final chapter of the book on Indian nationalism shows the ways in which Hindu nationalists used this Aryan idea for their own Nazist needs agains Muslims and Sikhs.

In the 1760s, as the British Empire expanded into Asia and the Pacific, its rulers proposed that certain peoples could be understood, and privileged, as a separate ?Aryan? race. Aryanism suggested that this whole region had originally been peopled by successive waves of vigorous Aryans, culminating in British colonisation. Ballantyne traces how this idea ?was used to naturalise, justify and celebrate British colonisation of South Asia.?

Chapters 1 and 6 look at imperial notions of India, which were used as a template for understanding other colonised societies. Chapters 2 to 5 examine how the Empire used these to try to control New Zealand?s Maori society. As ever, the empire exploited existing social divisions, to divide and rule, while claiming that it freed the most exploited from bonds of caste and priestly power. It called its domination ?liberation?, its exploitation ?development? and its wars ?pacifications?.

Unfortunately, Ballantyne commits what we may call the scholarly fallacy, asserting that the empire was woven together by webs of relationships, modes of discourse, rather than hammered into place by the capitalist mode of production. Only in passing does he note that the East India Company, the revenue manager for Bengal, collected increased revenues while famine killed a third of the people. Under Empire, rule, regular famines, in 1770, 1783 and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, killed tens of millions.

Ballantyne does not challenge the imperial myth that settlers, both military and missionary, benefit the host country, not their own individual gain. This is now transmuted into the liberal myth that immigrants benefit the host country.

He claims that there was a ?progressive? side of Aryanism, inclusive, globalising and non-racist. He praises the imperial policies of free flows of labour and products and ideas, and he opposes all forms of nationalism as exclusive and racist. This fits neatly into the Empire?s hostility to ?backward-looking? nationalism, and it also suits US imperial policy today.

But empire is always undemocratic, because it is based on rule by one class over other nations. Empire benefits its rulers, never the peoples, whatever the forms in which people think.

The Pacific Arts of Polynesia and Micronesia embraces the whole spectrum of Polynesian and Micronesian art forms--from tattooing to musical instruments--while including a focus on contemporary arts of the region. What's special about this book is that it looks at the arts of Polynesia and Micronesia side-by-side rather than seperately, illuminating the artistic types, styles, and concepts that they share.
This is agreat book for students of art history studying Pacific arts, and the general reader interested in the art of the Pacific island peoples.
The Pacific Arts of Polynesia and Micronesia (Oxford History of Art)

To a reader already interested in the culture of the Pacific, this is an instructive and enjoyable read. It shows the diversity of traditions, as expressed in the artworks, of a relatively small absolute number of people, scattered across a vast region.

The Polynesian influences may perhaps be familiar to an American reader. Especially if you are from Hawaii or California. You can see the origins of all those cheesy tiki memorabilia from the 50s and 60s. The photos of the carvings and fabrics are an integral part of the narrative. Giving an appreciation of the skills needed.

This is a charming story of the true life experiences of a girl (now a Grandmother) growing up in the Philipines during World War 2.

I am sure that teen-agers would enjoy reading this book, as well as adults. It's a small book and can be read in a matter of hours. I found I could not "put this book down"!

Very appealing!

Written from a child's perspective with vivid detail that will also captivate adults, Barbara-Ann's stories of her childhood in the Phillipines during the WWII Japanese occupation is a fascinating read. Her stories are a personal glimpse into the struggles of a multiracial child growing up poor during wartime told with humor, emotion and acute observation. "Pooh" will steal your heart.

We found this book to be very helpful and especially appreciated the Conversation/ Essentials in the rear of the book.
We only visited 'Upolu, and the guide gave us important insights about the Samoan culture and etiquette which served us well.
We stayed at Sinalei Reef Resort which we would highly recommend if you are traveling without children, and the restaurant at Coconut's Beach Club was excellent.
This guide is a must if you're going to Samoa and really want to enjoy it to it's fullest.

I have never liked how LP guides are arranged but have found them to consistantly have the best information [not perfect but better than other guides.] I wish they had not included Tonga as I am not going there and always travel as light at possible. The binding is not condusive to removing unwanted pages but I will remove the Tonga section anyway. I say, 'buy it!' but don't get bent out of shape should some info not prove to be correct.

Michelle Matthews has unearthed a pot-pourri of alternative venues for the discerning consumer. Street smart and shopping savvy, this book oozes class and cuts a swathe through similar projects aimed at a peculiar niche. Its light, breezy treatment and contemporary pace only hastens the buyer's decision-making process. What a Mecca Melbourne is! Roll on San Francisco, London...Moscow!

This book breaks Melbourne into shopping districts that can be covered in an afternoon or a day. Brief descriptions are sufficient to get a feel for whether you would be interested in visiting certain stores, or even whole districts, so that you can more efficiently plan your trip. Hours of operation are included. Colorful pictures of the interior of stores and their merchandise are helpful, but a relative indicator of prices (like a 1 to 5 dollar sign system) would be extremely helpful. Also, mileage indicators on the maps would be a big plus.

I bought this book in Sydney and found it a wealth of information on Sydney's beginings. The first time I read it, I savored every page...I couldn't put it down. As I got to the end of the book I felt bad that it was over, so I re-read it every few years. Jan Morris's style of writing is so entertaining and makes for a easy read.

Jan Morris has been everywhere, seen everything, met everyone, and tries to see the good in all of it. She seems happiest, though, among the young. She is surprisingly forgiving toward some of the hollower booster-driven cities of North America, while often coming down hard on New World cities that seem too full of themselves. (She memorably describes Washington, DC as seeming designed for nuclear annihilation.)

Not surprisingly, then, Morris is generous toward Sydney, honoring its brief history but focusing on its childlike present. Since the book was completed, of course, the child has become an adolescent, frantically acquiring attractions that will make it seem more adult -- preening itself for its moment on the world stage in the 2000 Olympics. Like many books about childhood, this one should be read wistfully, with the knowledge that the city it describes is only a snapshot, circa 1990, of a place that seems to be disappearing under its own need for approval.

Of course, during the inevitable post-Olympics hangover, this book may be useful in another way. When we lose track of who we are, when the purpose that has obsessed us suddenly evaporates, it's sometimes helpful to recall what gave us pleasure when we were children. At such a moment, Morris's portrait of Sydney in its last moments of childhood may offer the city a route back to its core, and thus forward into a happier adulthood.

Nick Vaux's memoir of his experiences as a Commando (battalion level) commander during the Falklands Island War should be mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to tactical command. His book, well written and entertaining, provides valuable insight into the stresses and strains that affect the commander. Battle focused training, hasty planning, and the effects of the environment on combatants are also topics that he addresses.

Nick Vaux commanded the 42 Commando during the Falklands campaign and has written about it in this non-fiction work. This engaging, fast read follows his command from England to the Falkland Islands where the unit suffers appalling conditions and undergoes horrendous demands but has a spectacular fight in the final liberation of the island. This is highly recommended for members of the profession of arms and provides other readers a sense of the desperate conditions of modern war.