Along the way, we get some fascinating tidbits about whaling, the founding of Punahou School (an elite private high school that happens to be our president's alma mater), a Hawaiian princess conflicted about marrying her brother, and a crazy pseudo-Mormon guy named Walter Murray Gibson who made friends with a Hawaiian king, but was excommunicated from the Mormon church for misappropriating funds. all led up to the US's rather underhanded annexation of Hawaii in 1898. of James Michener's Hawaii.)īeginning with King Kamehameha's unification (read as: conquest) of all the islands in the early 19th century and continuing through the arrival of the first American missionaries in 1820, the book explains how various events, factors, influences, etc. (Also, it mercifully allowed me to abandon my original plan to learn Hawaiian history: Trudge through all 1,140 pgs. I've always meant to read Vowell, and never have, so Unfamiliar Fishes provided an opportunity to kill two Hawaiian nene geese with one lava rock: learn history, read Vowell. So I was delighted when I learned that noted witticist Sarah Vowell's new book, Unfamiliar Fishes, provides a quick, glib guide to 19th century Hawaiian history. Secondly, I know embarrassingly little about Hawaii's history. First, I suck at pronouncing Hawaiian names. When I made my first trip to Hawaii on vacation earlier this year, I quickly realized two things.
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