You’ll never see the California coast the same way again after reading Dana. The only other book that comes close to that I have read is Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana – which I very highly recommend – particularly if you are a Southern Californian. The book describes in excruciating detail the difficulties seamen encountered trying to round Cape Horn. I also enjoyed the journey of the missionaries from England in the early part of the nineteenth century, by brig, round Cape Horn and eventually to Hawaii. We find out what might have motivated those early islanders to make a trip by canoe, thousands of miles to the north, to eventually find and settle Hawaii. We learn what their lives were like, driven by superstition, and brutal beyond belief, particularly in their paradise-like environment. The next section describes in detail the lives of the islanders in Bora Bora and the surrounding islands in the South Pacific thousands of years ago. That chapter of the book is priceless and I still think about it every time I visit the Islands. The book brings to life how the islands were formed and how its flora and fauna became established. I enjoyed the introductory chapter of the formation of the Hawaiian Islands millions of years ago. So this year, on another trip to Hawaii, I decided to read the book a second time. It’s a long book and I didn’t finish it during the one-week trip, but brought it home with me and worked through it. I first read this book in 1993 during my first ever trip to Hawaii.

Michener hawaii review