Unfamiliar Fishes

I love Sarah Vowell's take on history- her writing is bright, witty, and has a way of making history seem real and relevant without ever being irreverent. In fact, Vowell's respect for the people and places she writes about seeps out of every page. She even seems to have a soft spot for the missionaries in “Unfamiliar Fishes,” those precursors to the land- and sea-hungry Americans who would go on to depose Hawaii's traditional constitutional monarchy.

Vowell takes the modern history of Hawaii (and it's hard to believe that her narrative spans less than 250 years) and connects it to current events, 19th century U.S. politics, her own personal experiences, and even, in a deeply Hawaiian way, to the beginning of time.