Hawaii

Hawaii

James A. Michener

A sweeping epic that traces the islands from their volcanic origins through Polynesian settlement, missionary contact, and eventual statehood, carried across generations of finely drawn characters. The Pulitzer Prize winning novelist gives shape to centuries of change that a short visit could never reveal on its own.

Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia

Christina Thompson

A careful look into the deep past, tracing who first settled the remote islands of the Pacific, where they came from, and how they found their way across thousands of miles of open ocean. Thompson draws on archaeology, linguistics, and oral tradition to piece together one of history's great feats of navigation.

A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief

Patrick Vinton Kirch

Kirch follows the Hawaiians' ancestors from the shores of the South China Sea through their long voyages of discovery, then traces the gradual rise of the islands' god-kings. Four decades of his own archaeological research meet Native Hawaiian oral tradition to put a human face on that ascent to power.

Hawaiian Mythology

Martha Warren Beckwith

A scholarly gathering of the oral narratives that shaped ancient Hawaiian religion and culture, assembled with the rigor of a lifetime spent studying the islands' traditions. Beckwith treats these stories as living history rather than folklore, offering real insight into how the ancient Hawaiians understood their world.

Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii

James L. Haley

A thorough history spanning Captain Cook's first contact with the islands in 1778 through Kamehameha's rise and the eventual annexation in 1898. Haley moves through more than a century of change with a steady, well-researched hand, laying out exactly how the kingdom was built and how it was lost.

Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii

Mark Twain

Twain's own account of his four-month visit to the islands in 1866, written early in his career while he was still finding the voice that would make him famous. The letters are wildly entertaining and often irreverent, a firsthand record of a kingdom in the middle of great change.

Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen

Liliuokalani

The last six decades of the Hawaiian kingdom, recounted by its last reigning monarch in her own words. Liliuokalani wrote to explain to the world the injustice of her overthrow and to make her case for the sovereignty that had been taken from her.

Descent into Darkness: Pearl Harbor, 1941

Edward C. Raymer

As the battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie burning in the wake of the Japanese attack, a team of Navy salvage divers is handed the near impossible task of recovering trapped sailors and Marines. Raymer, the chief diver on the Pearl Harbor salvage operation, tells that story firsthand, in the plain language of someone who was actually there.

Voices of Wisdom: Hawaiian Elders Speak

M. J. Harden

Twenty-four Hawaiian elders share the accumulated wisdom of their respective crafts, from healing and navigation to hula and language. Harden lets each voice stand on its own, gathering a living record of the culture that the history books can only describe from the outside.

Flowers and Plants of Hawaii

Paul Wood and Ron Dahlquist

A photographed field guide built to answer the questions that come up on the ground: what is that flower, and why does it grow only here. Wood and Dahlquist cover the islands' plant life with the kind of clarity that turns a passing glance into real recognition.

Cook Real Hawai'i: A Cookbook

Sheldon Simeon

The two-time Top Chef finalist built this cookbook around the uncomplicated, flavor forward dishes that define modern Hawaiian cooking, drawing on the many cultures that have shaped the islands' cuisine over generations. These are not the recipes handed to visitors. They are the ones actually cooked at home.