The is a quintessential book for my library. I mean, this is exactly the kind of book that when I saw it I felt like it had been looking for me instead.
Where to start? I'm always on the scope for worthy history books to add to the library, and well put-together, mostly single narrative histories I really like, because the source is easily examined. This? From the person most closely related to the events possible?
I'm also interested in nearly anything tropically-island oriented, as reflected by a book I have on the Andaman Islanders. But Hawaii? One of our fifty states? This book is actually about how that went down, how the "transition" from Kingdom to American territory occurred, in painful real time.
It's about a place I've been to and enjoyed (+1); it's fascinating history (+1) about an island kingdom (+2), and how that kingdom became a state. And it was written by the last sovereign leader herself. Liliuokalani even has genealogical charts that chart the families of the tribes responsible for uniting the island into the kingdom, Kamehameha I. It has 21 large photographs in black and white.
Those 21 pages are in a row right in the beginning, after the introduction but before page 1, a solid block of ten sheets, front and back, 1870s era royalty. The book has LVII chapters, which if you don't instantly know that's 57 don't feel bad. There are also seven appendices--those are the genealogical charts and official letters from Her Majesty Queen Liliuokalani to the President of the United States.
The book runs over 400 pages.
I never knew it existed!
Okay...where did it come from? Thankfully that info is here as well. It was printed in Australia for Mutual Publishing in Honolulu, this from the 9th printing in 2004. It was first reprinted in this same look in 1990, and originally published in 1898. How it ended up where I found it, who knows...there are a ton of Hawaii stickers and such down here.
One thing that's very cool: Liliuokalani and Kamehameha are not considered misspelled words to these word processing programs. They've survived into the digital era with their beautiful names intact. It's the least we could do.
And this history book snuggles into the library naturally.
