tericarol21 's review for:

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

4.0

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Lots of good history here, and told in Sarah V's great humorous way. You can practically hear her voice while you read, and the prose is wonderful. The only thing keeping it from 5 stars is the utter dismissiveness of religious faith and missionaries. Yes, I will freely admit that the missionaries were terrible and behaved badly and helped undermine Hawaiian culture and independence and are in many ways worthy of being dismissed. But that does not need to translate into dismissing all of us. A few jabs here and there? fine. Humorously noting the irony inherent in the many things they did? fine. Taking every opportunity to mock? meh.

I learned a lot from this book and am glad I read it.