Helpful Score: 1
The content was great! For someone like me who knew little about the history of Hawaii, this was interesting stuff. The structure of the book does not make for a compelling can't-put-it-down read so I dipped into it, set it aside, and came back after awhile. Good writing.
This is not a scholarly text and the informal style may put people off. However, it covers a great deal of Hawaiian history and sheds light on the colonization of the 50th state.
Sarah Vowell is always great!
This was a book chosen by our book club and for the first time ever, no one was able to complete the book. We really, really tried. The writing we found to be condescending and the story line fragmented. All of this being far from what we read in reviews as funny, entertaining and informative. It appeared to be more along the lines of excerpts from her research notes to be a book, rather than a book itself. We were all terribly disappointed.