Ben Waber reviewed Islands of History by Marshall Sahlins
A Needlessly Self-Serious Anthropological/Historical Analysis
3 stars
I was hoping this book would get into the history of different Pacific Islands, and while there's a bit of that here in addition to some insightful cultural anthropology work it's mostly an almost comically self-serious philosophical work of historiography. This makes most of the book insufferable, and it's all the more frustrating because buried beneath the avalanche of overly obtuse and meandering prose are real gems about the cultural practices of a variety of island nations and their unique interactions with colonial powers. The fact that names such as George Washington, Thomas Paine, and John Adams became popular on the Hawaiian islands in the early 1800s was especially fascinating. Still, those bright spots don't merit a slog through this mercifully short book.
I was hoping this book would get into the history of different Pacific Islands, and while there's a bit of that here in addition to some insightful cultural anthropology work it's mostly an almost comically self-serious philosophical work of historiography. This makes most of the book insufferable, and it's all the more frustrating because buried beneath the avalanche of overly obtuse and meandering prose are real gems about the cultural practices of a variety of island nations and their unique interactions with colonial powers. The fact that names such as George Washington, Thomas Paine, and John Adams became popular on the Hawaiian islands in the early 1800s was especially fascinating. Still, those bright spots don't merit a slog through this mercifully short book.