This guide is interesting, and indeed it offers insights on some aspects of travel in the region which other guides do not address. But it surely does not match the standard of Lonely Planet and similar guides. The advice is not so up-to-date as it claims, and as much as it can be funny and anecdotal, its advice is not always relevant. Maybe a good purchase for the armchair traveller, but not for whom is really travelling to this marvellous region.

This book covers only the hot spots likely to be visited by someone with not over two weeks to spend in the South Pacific. Any place slightly off the beaten tourist track or without comfortable hotels isn't included. Goodwin does tack a few cheap hostels onto the end of his upscale hotel listings, in a condescending way. It's a cleverly written book, well suited to the package tour market. In short, a guide intended to help you spend money rather than save it.

It is very obvious that the author of this book has actually been to the South Pacific - he is very enthusiastic about the area - and sincerely wants his readers to love it too! We have followed the book's on two trips and have found the advise to be 100% accurate. I highly recommend this book - it can be trusted.

The Shark Callers is not only pointless but is also without a message. It is about two boys who lead two different paths. They do not interact at all during the course of the book. At the end of the book when Kaleku is killed, Eric Campbell explains that he was giving his life in order to save Andy's. Kaleku had no knowledge that Andy was near him or that Andy's life was in danger. He was simply doing what he set out to do; hunt sharks. Whats more, it is without an ending. There is an Epilouge in which the writer describes what hapens to the characters. In conclusion, this book just flat out confused me.

This is a pretty good book and I would reccomend it to anyone who likes action and adventure. When I say adventure I mean volcanoes, sharks, tidal waves, earthquakes, the whole 9 yards. It is a great book. It is a fast read. Nothing hard, except that there are some words that are hard that you have to look up in the glossary for. I didn't like that part. It is a really good read though and deserves a lot of credit.

this book was pretty good. it too a while for things to get rolloing but once that happened it took off in a really good book.

There's some interesting history in this book, and even a little bit of decent analysis. Unfortunately, it's buried under several layers -- of bad academic writing, vaguely Marxist bafflegab about hegemony and "discourse", and the overpoweringly loud grinding of a couple of ideological axes. Hanson sees that Micronesia is a mess (which it certainly is), and manages to give us some vague idea of how it got that way. Insofar as it's possible to dig a thesis out of his mushy prose and rambling narrative, he blames Uncle Sam. That's fine -- there's certainly a case to be made for it -- but that's about as far as he gets. The US (and its colonial apparatus, the Trust Territory) is the villain of the piece, while the Micronesians are exploited, victims, oppressed. The book simply does not entertain the idea that the Micronesians might be in some measure responsible for their own situation. It also focusses on the more horrific failures of US administration there (of which there are, to be sure, no shortage) while ignoring the various successes, relative and qualified as they are. To give just the most obvious shortcoming, Hanson barely glances at the stupendously rapid economic development in the Northern Marianas Islands. In a book that's supposed to be at least tangentially about economic development, this is a striking omission.

Hanson devotes a long chunk of his final chapter to a critique of P.F. Kluge's _The Edge of Paradise_. Well, Kluge was not a historian, he had a lot of prejudices and blind spots, and his book had some serious problems (and it's getting pretty dated these days). But Kluge on his worst day could write rings around Hanson, and _The Edge of Paradise_ is not only far more readable than _Remaking Micronesia_, but it will (still) tell you much more about Micronesia.

Space prohibits me from taking apart Hanson's writing style in detail, but... well, it's bad. Long, turgid sentences in the passive voice, paragraphs that ramble around pointlessly, and painful attacks of academic-ese. Also, it's rather hard to figure out who this book is supposed to be read by. It assumes that the reader already knows the basic facts of recent Micronesian history, but then proceeds to give Hanson's interpretation of it. Anyone who takes an interest in Micronesia (there aren't many of us) probably already has strong opinions on the matter and will find this authorial voice rather off-putting.

In sum, this book is a muddled, badly written mess. I give it a couple of stars because it will be of interest to students of Micronesian development and history, but they should be prepared to wade through a lot of rhetorical mud to find a few nuggets of interest here.

In _Remaking Micronesia: Discourses over Development in a Pacific Territory, 1944-1982_, David Hanlon examines the ideological construction of post-World War Two American economic development in "Micronesia," a geopolitical term he employs to represent the Caroline, Marshall, and Northern Mariana Islands. Hanlon asserts that the discourses of economic development (i.e., federally funded projects, agricultural studies, etc.) in the history of Micronesia's political relationship with the United States sought to "remake" the islands and islanders into a modern, monolithic American community. Hanlon argues convincingly through his discourse analysis of US military and federal documents, among other primary and secondary sources, that the rhetoric of "American development" ultimately served as a discursive strategy of manipulation which attempted to elide the underlying purpose of post-World War Two American imperialism in this region, that is, the militarization of Micronesia's lands, seas and peoples.

"Remaking Micronesia" is first of all a text that provokes a long-hard look at the ghetoization of the Pacific by US ideology and foreign policy; it is not for bureaucrats from Washington DC who think "upstreaming" veterans with fading memories out of Florida would help resolve issues of military occupation and Cold War rhetoric (this, in response to the first review on these pages). In there, David Hanlon not only uncovers a lot of the American two-facedness in its foreign policies, but he also reveals, although subtly, the two-facedness of islanders in politics as they have been silenced by their material comforts and the divide and rule nature of American colonialism. "Remaking Micronesia" points out ongoing colonialism particularly as it serves US interests even though the Cold War is over and Pacific islanders are no longer needed for nuclear and biological experimentation. I commend Hanlon for his courageous condemnation of human folly and for providing much needed knowledge on what and why the US was and continues to be interested in the Pacific. Pacific islanders, particularly the American islanders have been branded as lazy and irresponsible; Hanlon's study sheds light on why these misperceptions exist. The impact of US colonialism, both old and new, on the psyche and cultures of these people has been devastating, particularly as American bureaucratization and so-called good-will programs, including their Peace Corps, continue to benefit them financially more than the islanders they are purported to help. Grants from Uncle Sam are a drop in the bucket in the US budget and are returned to the US through planeloads of consultants island hopping through Microneisa. The average islander still tries to catch fish and plant taro on a daily basis.

Every Pacific islander should read Dr. Hanlon's "Remaking Micronesia" as should designers of US foreign policy and teachers teaching the Pacific. Hanlon's style is reminiscent of the island cultural icons and metaphors so it is very accessible to island scholars and those that have experienced places like Micronesia.

I have enjoyed the Xenophobe's Guides to three of the peoples that I've lived among (Danes, Swedes and English), and have felt them to be insightful and humorous. Consequently I was very disappointed by the Xenophobe's Guide to the Kiwis. It was neither insightful nor humorous. I felt that the light-hearted teasing applied in the other books was largely replaced by an air of base critical negativity. It concentrated on some very odd, and utterly redundant things that I feel the XG is hardly the forum for. The Kiwi author has taken the very real Kiwi trait of self-bashing to an unfortunate extreme in the completely wrong publication.

Jo, you truly are the definition of a xenophobe. Assuming you have actually been to New Zealand, you must really have some issues if you came away with an attitude like that. Wherever you are from, at least the majority of all kiwis are broad-minded enough to realise that despite your apparent lack of intelligence and ability to make sweeping generalisations, these are probably not traits apparent in everyone from your country. Get a life.

Jo Chambers is a bitter and twisted individual, who is in great need of a holiday. Jo ¡°sweetie¡±, I suggest a wonderfully relaxing holiday in beautiful New Zealand.

The blurb for this book suggests a scholarly analysis of the effect of law on an emerging culture. It is anything but. It is better described as a muddled attempt to justify the modern political movement that elevates the descendants of 18th century Hawaiians to sacred victimhood enjoyed by Indians and Eskimos. The title should be a warning that this author cannot tell the difference between a colonist and an immigrant. She displays a less than adequate understanding of Hawaiian history and misses the significance of early leaders, both native and immigrant. Queen Kaahumanu, probably the most important force in creating the Hawaiian monarchy, is barely mentioned, and then denigrated as a sort of tool of the Christian missionaries. Sanford Dole, chief justice of the monarchy, head of the provisional government, president of the republic, and governor of the territory, is ignored. The biggest problem with this book is that too many readers will take it seriously.

This book is a valuable study of the colonization of Hawai`i and the role of "law" in the islands' cultural transformation. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a critical understanding of Hawai`i's social, economic and politial dynamics. I particularly benefited from the insights on religion, sexuality and women. Sally Engle Merry provides a good articulation of the inevitable paradoxes facing the Hawaiian Nation in the 19th century vis-a-vis encroaching American imperialism and colonization. "Colonizing Hawai`i" is also a good read in the context of critical legal studies.

Like all the Pisces dive guides I've read, this one is superficial and poorly illustrated. Don't waste your money on this lightweight and useless pamphlet masquerading as a dive guide.

very helpful in telling me what to expect at various sites so i could decide which lens to put into my housing. Camera preparation cuts into my vacation time...and these books help get ready. So i always study them before i go. always.

Favourably impressed by the plentiful illustrations (126 black-and-white photographs, drawings, and figures), the colour plates (nine fine photographs), the lengthy bibliography, index, and decipherment of the rongorongo (the indigenous Easter Island hieroglyphs). Mild annoyance soon turned into utter exasperation.

Palaeoastronomy is treated in a section (Time, the Calendar, Sacred Geography and Ritual) of chapter 7, pages 100 to 102. An illustration will rise here in 90 minutes". The figure also shows the year AD 1500, they would have seen the Pleiades at 18 degrees above the horizon at the end of the astronomical twilight on hua, the twelfth night of the moon in the Rapa Nui month of Te Maro". There I jumped. Firstly, Hua is the EIGHTH night of the ancient lunar month, the night after the first quarter (Maharu) and that thin crescent should therefore have been a half-crescent. Second, the calendar was luni-solar (like the Ancient Greek and the Jewish calendars), so that some years having twelve months and some thirteen, we cannot be sure of the correspondences between the months of the Maro. Third, the Pleiades being 18 degrees above the horizon and impossible, June 21st being the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere. In fact, if I am to believe my astronomical not the 12th or the 8th night of the lunar month, but the 25th. So much for palaeoastronomy.

The part about the rongorongo (pp.111-115) starts with a gratuitous discussion of Lapita pottery, the patterns of which look nothing like the famous hieroglyphs by any stretch of imagination. A whole paragraph then deals with the Naga rebellion against British rule in Assam in the 1930s. Why? Well, the leader of the rebellion had filled a set of notebooks with "regular and repetitive symbols resembling writing but in no known language". Of what possible relevance is that? Of the serious work on the hieroglyphs, not one word, not even a mention of Barthel's indispensable "Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift", even in the bibliography. Not a word on the works of Kudrjavtsev, Butinov, Knorozov, Fedorova, nor how the evidence produced by Butinov and Knorozov convinced Metraux that the rongorongo were a proper writing system, against his original opinion. So much for the rongorongo.

Desultorily leafing through, English. "Ethnography" is used systematically in lieu of "oral tradition", even pluralized (ethnographies = oral traditions). Then I saw this word I did not know: "ramage". Clearly a French word, but it made no sense in the context (it means "canopy" or "singing of birds"). My Collins dictionary (1690 pages) knowing nothing of "ramage" -- nor my Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language (1550 pages) -- I had to turn to my unabridged Oxford (16,000+ pages). "Ramage" is an obsolete word, with the same meanings as in modern French, none of which is what van Tilburg means: "local subgroups" (p.86, but you'll search for it in vain in the glossary, which contains only Polynesian words). So much for writing clearly.

On p.146 you are treated to the knowledge that "Some 40.3% of the statues in Rano Raraku [a volcanic crater from which most of the stone was quarried] are found on the interior and exterior slopes". An impressively accurate figure indeed (why "some" then?) that lends it an air of scientific respectability. But wait, if 40.3% are found on the interior and exterior slopes of the crater, where on earth are the remaining 59.7%? At the bottom of the crater (underwater)? On the ridge? Fascinating questions left unanswered. But impressive accuracy knows how to rub shoulders with fuzziness too. On the same page, in the previous (sic) of Rano Raraku crater is ringed... by evenly spaced [how evenly?] hare paenga of overall similar sizes [how similar?]. Nearly all of the structures [how many really?]... and most have umu pae associated [how many is most?]". Not one set of figures to support those "nearly", "evenly", "most". So much for statistical analysis.

Those are not unrepresentative selections. Open the book at random. You will be treated to the same. On page 114 is a diagram showing Katherine Routledge's "collected data from seven old Rapa Nui men regarding 15 named kohau rongorongo [tablets]". Seven columns, with the names of the seven men, fifteen rows, with obsolete names for the tablets. There is no key, no explanations, you are left to your own devices to figure out which tablets those names refer to, and what (mast) and (roof) might possibly mean. Open it at random again, p.139: "Hoa Hakananai'a, the basalt statue from Orongo, presents unique and significant evidence of Rapa Nui social change encoded within its form and design (fig. 144)". Figure 144 shows the back of a statue, unique in that it is covered in carved hieroglyphs. Since no-one knows their meaning or their import, of what significance can their evidence be, beyond the author's own projected imaginations?