[bookshare-discuss] Submitted: books on Hawaii
- From: "Brian Miller" <brian-r-miller@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 07:03:23 -0800
All,
I am submitting three books today on Hawaiian history. The first is the
following:
The Colony, by John Taiman, 2006, 300 pages.
From the book jacket:
THE COLONY reveals the untold history of the infamous American leprosy
settlement on the Hawaiian island of Molokai and of the exceptional people who
managed to survive under the most horrific circumstances.
In 1866, twelve men and women and one small child were put aboard a leaky
schooner and cast away to an island prison. Two weeks later a dozen others were
exiled, then forty more, and then a hundred. Tracked by bounty hunters and torn
from their families, the luckless were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and
abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have
leprosy, and many who did were not contagious, yet all were ensnared in a
shared nightmare. Their natural prison had little food, little medicine, and
terribly little hope.
Exile on Molokai continued for more than a century, the longest and deadliest
instance of medical segregation in American history. In all, more than eight
thousand people were banished to the settlement. Some remain there today.
Here, for the first time, John Tayman reveals the complete history of this
fascinating and troubling spot and its inhabitants. Using rare historical
documents, letters, journals, government reports, newspaper accounts, and
hundreds of hours of interviews, he tells the story of unsuspecting people
tumbled into a situation beyond imagination. It is a fantastic epic of ruthless
manhunts, thrilling escapes, shipwrecks and tidal waves, murder and mutiny,
bizarre medical experiments, and tragic, irreversible error.
The Colony brings to life the unforgettable individuals of this unique
community: the residents, young and old, who persevered and forged new lives
for themselves and the outsiders who were drawn to the place. The astounding
cast includes a young Catholic priest who volunteered to live among the exiles
and in his sacrifice found both death and certain sainthood; a brilliant German
scientist, coolly calculating, who undertook one of the most unsettling cases
of human experimentation in history; and the tuberculosis-stricken writer
Robert Louis Stevenson, who wiled his way in, fell close to death, then emerged
to sketch a stunning portrait of the colony, transforming it for a time into
the most famous place in the world.
Carefully researched and masterfully told, The Colony spins a searing tale of
individual bravery and extraordinary survival, and stands as a testament to the
remarkable power of faith, compassion, heroism, and the human spirit.
***
This is a unique and brilliant piece of history. The scan is very good ( a few
flaws, but overall very solid), and is in RTF.
I hope someone picks up this book soon.
Brian Miller
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