Oceania Books

I simply cannot believe no one has reviewed this remarkable book here yet. Where would anyone start....? perhaps that was the problem. Well, to start, this is a book has the aura of a work written in a time when you marked your intellectual territory and explored it thoroughly like a lost continent, gave it the most of your life. The travel, the endless note-taking, the sifting of sources, the drawings.... Yet it was a never a lost world, it was old, it had its technologies and accomplishments to stand alongside a trip to Mars. In this book find the "space ships" at the end of an evolution of a thousand or two thousand years or more. The European explorers stumbled upon islands and found people whose canoes could sail closer to the wind than their own, without the aid of metal tools, metal fastners, rope walks. Give the Pacific people some vegetable fiber, a log, a weavable tree-leaf, a shell, and the gathered know-how of hard voyaging, desperation, lost-at-seas, and joyous landfalls, and they express the material thinking of the human combining the solution of technical problems with the ritual and aesthetic. Where they could, they produced outrigger canoes of beauty that will seem strange and stunning to the Western reader. Where they could not, as on the resource-depleted Easter Island, they still nearly came up with something from nearly nothing. There now, I did what I could. If you call yourself a sailor, you need to see this book. You may read some straight through, but mostly I prophesize you'll sometimes pick it up, flip randomly to some page, and fall into engrossed study. --wt

Australian birder Sean Dooley describes his Big Year, an effort to break the record for the most birds seen in Australia (and environs) in a year.

I loved this birding memoir. Dooley is a lively, humorous, engaging writer, and his Australian slang makes his voice particularly come alive, at least for this American reader. He conveys a passion for his pursuit and a concern for wildlife and the environment without sanctimony.

Clearly, there are scads of awesome birds in Australia, and undoubtedly they have the best common names of any birds anywhere. The species list at the back of the book is an entertainment in itself.

I am at a loss, however, to explain Mr. Dooley's difficulty in finding women who bird. Maybe it's a cultural thing?

Definitely recommended, especially for American readers to whom the language and most of the species will be engagingly exotic.

There are few books available to gain an understanding of modern (prior to 1989) Bougainvillian history.

The author is an anthropologist who spent time in mainly the South west (Siwai) in the 1930's and episodically since.

His review of the island's history, geography and culture is good and thorough. He presents interesting insights into the reasons for the crisis and some of the different groups and players, but not in great detail.

He could be regarded as biased because he worked for Bougainville Copper in the 70's and ? 1980's. However the book seems quite independant in its stance and it is likely that his prior association with the mining company is mainly responsible for him not expanding a bit more in this area.

It is not really dated and this is an indication of how useful a book it is.

Overall this is a must to read before visiting Bougainville, which is a very pleasant place as are the people.

The re-release of "the Bloody Battle for Suribachi" is a wonderful edition to the collection of books written by Richard Wheeler. I know Wheeler personally, and at his age he has worked hard along with his 2nd cousin Jackie Russel. It is enlightening to see what inspiration can do for an aging Iwo Jima vet. He autographed a copy for my son. The inscription goes,"I hope that you cheerish your life the way I have cheerished mine." My son is 15 years old, it will be given to him at his high school graduation! Wheeler is finally getting the recognition that he so deserves!!
Steve Krott
PS.He is a hero to me and my family!!!!!!

More than "just" a travel guide, this book offers thought-provoking insights into Australian culture through essays that provide an insider's look at the territory for the visitor (or would-be visitor).

I found the section of colorful and quirky Australian dialect especially entertaining and illuminating.

I've never been to Australia but after reading this book I am more anxious to travel there. This book is a comprehensive and useful travel guide PLUS.

Peter Bennett and Ursula Keuper-Bennett both fell in love with honu, the Pacific green sea turtle populating the Hawaiian Islands. This book, The Book of Honu, is their contribution to honu literature and art.

The uniqueness of the authors' contributions is the detailed information on honu living in one place off the coast of Maui. They have identified over 750 unique honu, and watched them grow, interact with each other, disappear and reappear, and, sadly, disappear forever.

Bennett and Keuper-Bennett aren't scientists, but their fascination with honu got them interacting with sea turtle managers and scientists. These scientists realized that Bennett and Keuper-Bennett possessed unique observations and insights about honu behavior, and the idea of collecting this information in one place resulted in the development of this book.

As a book on honu, it has its strengths and weaknesses. You won't find everything you'd like to know about green sea turtles here. And Bennett and Keuper-Bennett aren't shy about speculating on the meaning of honu behaviors. But the photography is excellent, and there is some great insight into why (and how) honu do what they do (particularly Chapter 6, "The Things Honu Do").

Here are some comments and observations on issues discussed in the text:

"Hawai'i's turtles are 100% Hawaiian, living their entire lives within the island chain and surrounding ocean waters" (p. 5). However, the "lost years" (mentioned on pages 59-60) note that we really don't know where post-hatchlings go and live for 4-6 years before returning to the main Hawaiian Islands. I'd call them 95% Hawaiian.

"Any action that prompts a [basking] honu to retreat into the water, such as touching, could be considered illegal. More important, through, is to see it from the turtle's point of view: you've ruined a nice sunbath. How rude!" (p. 14). Bennett and Keuper-Bennett repeatedly point out proper etiquette while visiting honu in the water and on land.

In discussing the head, the authors note "It turns out that a part of the head is an unusually thick skull. It's so thick that there isn't a lot of room for the brain, which in an adult is about the size of a shelled almond" (p. 30). Although I've not seen a honu brain (I've necropsied one loggerhead), and I know sea turtle brains are small, this seems too small. The brain is proportionally larger in hatchlings and juveniles than in subadults and adults according to sea turtle anatomist Jeanette Wyneken, and any measurement really depends on how much of the brain you are looking at (forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, spinal cord). An adult honu brain is probably a bit bigger than a shelled almond.

"Honu recruits are all promise, so if you encounter one, remember that they are impressionable and still learning. How you behave might have a significant effect on the little honu's future attitude toward humans" (p. 60). This is a theme Bennett and Keuper-Bennett repeat throughout their book: honu learn about humans via our interactions with them. However, I doubt (but cannot cite evidence) that hatchlings remember their interactions with people during that mad dash to the surf and the frenzied swimming that follows. Our behavior around baby honu probably affects our interactions with other sea creatures more than affecting honu behavior toward humans. However, that changes in a huge way when they finally reach their permanent foraging and resting sites. "Every single day in Hawai'i, humans are taming honu. By not harassing, hurting, or hunting them, residents and visitors alike teach the honu that they have nothing to fear from close human contact. As we said before honu learn from experience" (p. 139). Alas, this proved true when Honeygirl, a popular honu basking on Laniakea Beach on Oahu, was killed and butchered by persons as yet unknown in 2008. She learned that humans were no threat as thousands of visitors delighted in her company. In this case, she was wrong to trust us.

Chapter 6, again, is a real gift to the honu enthusiast!

Finally, Bennett and Keuper-Bennett make note of the rumblings that there are some who want to begin killing and eating honu once again. "While the recovery of the honu population has triggered a call from some Hawaiians to allow turtle hunting again, none of the former hunters we know supports that position" (p. 116). "In the near future, Native Hawaiians could resume the right to catch a limited number of honu in accordance with their cultural customs and uses" (p. 125). It is important to note that, once honu are delisted as threatened (a designation that protects them under the Endangered Species Act; they are also protected by state law), there is no requirement that harvesting be limited to those of Hawaiian descent. There are no treaty rights dictating custom here, as with other native peoples that give them legal rights to harvest whales or other protected marine mammals. Currently, we see the controversy over western states trying to reinstate a hunting season on gray wolves, a recovered (or recovering) species. Similarly, we should expect great controversy over harvesting honu as well, since a generation of residents and visitors have come, like Bennett and Keuper-Bennett, to love "their" honu.

This is a great book for the honu enthusiast. This is also a book for people interested in any species of sea turtle, as Bennett and Keuper-Bennett provide great insights into how sea turtles can be studied, respected, and loved.

I loved this book, it had everything, suspense, intrigue and a desert island. It is really a classic, everyone should read it, I read it in high school and I recently purchased another copy to have for my kids. Anyone can love this book!

The BUG guides are simple to read, a lot thinner, less bulky and heavy than their competitors who keep adding fine dining, five star hotels and other stuff we backpackers never use (which makes a lot of difference when you have to lug the thing around an entire continent, or even in this case just New Zealand) and much better value. They give a description and rating on each hostel (they claim they do not accept free nights or money but who knows), as well as maps of hostel locations and travel company information.

You obviously won't agree with all their reviews of the accommodation but that's the backpacking scene. You can have a terrible experience at somewhere where someone else had one of the best stays of their life. Don't rely on this guide alone, ask other backpackers who have been to the destinations you are going where they stayed and what it was like. The more opinions you get the more likely you are to get a clearer picture.

Definitely get this over Lonely Planet and Let's Go, at least until they clean up their acts.

This is a great story by a spirited Lady, who isn't content with only dreaming of adventure. Her writing is vivid and makes you feel as if you are sharing the adventure with her and her husband. Lee's poems are a treat for the mind and the photographs are worth a thousand words.

The artist/photographer's breakthrough collection of color portrait photographs. Destined to be a 21st-century photography classic. Limited Edition of 1000 signed copies. A brilliant production by Chris Pichler: Oversize-volume format. Cloth boards with titles on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Chan Chao. Preface by Jeffrey Hoone. Afterword by Amitav Ghosh. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents the artist/photographer's uncanny, arresting and moving portraits in color of the Burmese people who are dedicated to the Resistance against the lawless Burmese government. "Chan Chao returned to Burma with the intention of rediscovering and reconnecting with the culture and people he had left years before. Twice denied a visa by the Burmese government, Chao eventually made his way to the Thai-Burmese border, where students had established several camps to launch guerrilla attacks against the military regime that controlled Burma, with the goal of restoring democracy to the country. Chao's portraits are remarkable for the sense of calm and tenderness that he draws out of each of his subjects. Each portrait is made from an intimate distance, generously placing each subject in the center of the frame surrounded by the soft focus of the lush jungle beyond. In many of his portraits the subjects hold simple objects: a sickle, a saw, a large piece of fruit, a live chicken. These simple objects provide an elegant solution to the problem of portraiture where individuals are often unsure of what to do with their hands, and in that uncertainty convey stiff and formal poses. But the objects are also disarming because they signal the activities of a simple agrarian life, not one of armed resistance. This contradiction plays heavily into the power that each image conveys, because each person that Chao photographs displays a remarkable range of honesty and emotion that seems to long for a return to the simple pleasures of family, work, and relaxation" (Jeffrey Hoone). The prestigious art critic of The New Yorker Magazine considered Chan Chao's contribution to the 2002 Whitney Biennial, the most prestigious contemporary American art exhibition of its kind, to be one of just two truly worthwhile reasons for seeing the Biennial at all: "Chan Chao's pictures remind me why I like art. Addressing his subjects with scrupulous formality, he extends his medium to see and say what there is to be seen and said" (Peter Schjeldahl). © 2006, ModernRare.com