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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Sarah Vowell always manages to take what should be dry, boring sections of history and enliven therm far beyond what I could reasonably expect.
This time the subject is the history of Hawaii, and I can confidently asset that prior to starting this book the extent of my knowledge in that area amounted to "it didn't used to be a state and now it is." I know much more about how all this came to be, and the only emotion I can muster is sadness.
It's a tight narrative arc, the American interaction with the islands. It took less than a century to get from religious do-gooders genuinely concerned about the Hawaiians to a cabal of businessmen deciding their profits outweighed all other concerns and forcibly overthrew the elected government. I'm sure
The more history I learn, the more I suspect that I don't (and, in many cases, can't) know about any given topic. There are so many layers, characters and narratives swirling around any event that to discover one only inevitably leads you to several more. This is not a reason to discourage such pursuits, merely a reminder about their ultimate lack of finality. Still, the best we can get is closer, and the only way to do that is to keep trying.
This time the subject is the history of Hawaii, and I can confidently asset that prior to starting this book the extent of my knowledge in that area amounted to "it didn't used to be a state and now it is." I know much more about how all this came to be, and the only emotion I can muster is sadness.
It's a tight narrative arc, the American interaction with the islands. It took less than a century to get from religious do-gooders genuinely concerned about the Hawaiians to a cabal of businessmen deciding their profits outweighed all other concerns and forcibly overthrew the elected government. I'm sure
The more history I learn, the more I suspect that I don't (and, in many cases, can't) know about any given topic. There are so many layers, characters and narratives swirling around any event that to discover one only inevitably leads you to several more. This is not a reason to discourage such pursuits, merely a reminder about their ultimate lack of finality. Still, the best we can get is closer, and the only way to do that is to keep trying.
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
not as engaging as Ms. Vowell's previous books - prior to Wordy Shipmates - though on par with that book. Even though not as engaging, the observations, similar to those studied in depth in Wordy Shipmates, feel like they needed to be made so that the ideas were put out in the world to be encountered and possibly incorporated into more thought.
I would not have finished it, but for the fact that I really did not know anything really about the annexation of Hawaii, so I had to see it through to the end.
I would not have finished it, but for the fact that I really did not know anything really about the annexation of Hawaii, so I had to see it through to the end.
Sarah Vowell is my go-to when people ask for something completely different. Usually, her opening anecdotes, insights, and historical research is fascinating, but I just couldn't get into this one. I had to force myself to finish it and I'll always look at a plate lunch and think poorly of this book.
Sarah Vowell comes across as fairly charming. But in this book, her "pop history" approach winds up feeling a little scatter-shot. Still, for example, her digressions into American and missionary relationships with the Cherokee became more understandable when I realized this book isn't about the Hawaiian people. It's about the missionaries who traveled to the islands, what they did there, and how they prepared the islands culturally and politically for annexation. She also argues that the annexation was in character with the US's previous expansion into North America and 1898 widespread power consolidation as spoils of the Spanish-American War (the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba--or at least Guantanamo Bay).
She tries to portray the missionaries as both an incursion of cultural xenophobes and simultaneously as true believers who cared about the well-being of the Hawaiians. As an aspiring educator, I was fascinated to learn how the missionaries learned to speak Hawaiian, devised a system for writing it down, and taught Hawaiians to read--reaching a 75% literacy level in two generations, outdistancing the US's reading ability. Of course, this was all in service of getting printing presses working putting out Hawaiian translations of the Bible (done by eight ministers over 15 years, directly from the Hebrew...amazing!) I didn't think I could find missionaries sympathetic, but I sort of did by the end.
So I learned a lot more details of people and places (stuff I'd carefully ignored in middle school), and there's a lengthy bibliography in the back. Although it did not satisfy me as much as I'd like, it did leave me hungry for more history about our islands. It's a quick and easy read, and I hope it inspires others to dig in and understand more.
She tries to portray the missionaries as both an incursion of cultural xenophobes and simultaneously as true believers who cared about the well-being of the Hawaiians. As an aspiring educator, I was fascinated to learn how the missionaries learned to speak Hawaiian, devised a system for writing it down, and taught Hawaiians to read--reaching a 75% literacy level in two generations, outdistancing the US's reading ability. Of course, this was all in service of getting printing presses working putting out Hawaiian translations of the Bible (done by eight ministers over 15 years, directly from the Hebrew...amazing!) I didn't think I could find missionaries sympathetic, but I sort of did by the end.
So I learned a lot more details of people and places (stuff I'd carefully ignored in middle school), and there's a lengthy bibliography in the back. Although it did not satisfy me as much as I'd like, it did leave me hungry for more history about our islands. It's a quick and easy read, and I hope it inspires others to dig in and understand more.
I thought the subject was interesting, but Vowell's writing style was hard to keep track of. I thought she was funny, but the way she wrote about the history was not linear at all. Sometimes it seemed like she was on multiple tangents at once. She would also talk about a certain time period and then seemingly move on, but then go back to that time period later on in the book.
We see our country (USA) as a force of good in the world yet when we look out onto the planet we only help those that tend to cost us business. In this book Sarah Vowell shows us how unfair a country we can be when special interests, with unmeasurable arrogance, put profit above all else.
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
not my favourite by vowell, but better than the wordy shipmates, though i think it suffers from the same problems.
unfamiliar fishes is well-researched, but poorly presented. being told in the same chapterless stream as the wordy shipmates, this book would have benefitted from supplementary material. there's a map at the front, but, because there are so players mentioned, a list of key figures and a family tree of the royal family would have been extremely helpful.
vowell presents the colonization of hawai'i through the lens of america's two religions: christianity and capitalism. they are pretty evenly divided (though the timeline does jump back and forth a fair bit). i think that dividing the book into three chapters--christianity, capitalism, and the two combining for the overthrow in 1893.
aside from that, my only real complaints are that vowell isn't hard enough on the missionaries and that princess ka'iulani is barely a footnote when she was such an interesting figure and fought so hard to keep her country :(
unfamiliar fishes is well-researched, but poorly presented. being told in the same chapterless stream as the wordy shipmates, this book would have benefitted from supplementary material. there's a map at the front, but, because there are so players mentioned, a list of key figures and a family tree of the royal family would have been extremely helpful.
vowell presents the colonization of hawai'i through the lens of america's two religions: christianity and capitalism. they are pretty evenly divided (though the timeline does jump back and forth a fair bit). i think that dividing the book into three chapters--christianity, capitalism, and the two combining for the overthrow in 1893.
aside from that, my only real complaints are that vowell isn't hard enough on the missionaries and that princess ka'iulani is barely a footnote when she was such an interesting figure and fought so hard to keep her country :(
challenging
funny
informative
medium-paced
Important history in a fun form. I found the audio format a disappointment however and plan to do the rest of my Sarah Vowell reading the old fashioned way.