Pacific Passages

Pacific Passages
Author: Patrick Moser
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2008-05-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0824831551

A thousand years after Hawaiians first paddled long wooden boards into the ocean, modern surfers have continued this practice, which has recently been transformed into a global industry. Pacific Passages brings together four centuries of writing about surfing, the most comprehensive collection of Polynesian and Western perspectives on the history and culture of a sport currently enjoyed by millions of people around the world. The stories begin with Hawaiian legends and chants and are followed by the journals of explorers; the travel narratives of missionaries and luminaries such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Jack London; and the contemporary observations of Tom Wolfe, William Finnegan, Susan Orlean, and Bob Shacochis. Readers follow the historical transformation of surfing’s image through the centuries: from Polynesian myths of love to Western accounts of horror and exoticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to modern representations of surfing as a character-building activity in pre-World-War II California and the quintessential expression of disaffected youth. They explore the sport’s most recent trends by writers and cultural critics, whose insights into technology, competition, gender, heritage, and globalism reveal how surfing impacts some of today’s most pressing social concerns. Aided by informative introductions, the writings in Pacific Passages provide insight into the values and ideals of Polynesian and Western cultures, revealing how each has altered and been altered by surfing—and how the sport itself has shown an amazing ability throughout the centuries to survive, adapt, and prosper.

The Pacific

The Pacific
Author: Hugh Ambrose
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2010-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101185848

The New York Times bestselling official companion book to the Emmy® Award-winning HBO® miniseries. Look for The Pacific miniseries, now available to stream on Netflix! Between America's retreat from China in late November 1941 and the moment General MacArthur's airplane touched down on the Japanese mainland in August of 1945, five men connected by happenstance fought the key battles of the war against Japan. From the debacle in Bataan, to the miracle at Midway and the relentless vortex of Guadalcanal, their solemn oaths to their country later led one to the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot and the others to the coral strongholds of Peleliu, the black terraces of Iwo Jima and the killing fields of Okinawa, until at last the survivors enjoyed a triumphant, yet uneasy, return home. In The Pacific, Hugh Ambrose focuses on the real-life stories of five men who put their lives on the line for our country. To deepen the story revealed in the HBO® miniseries and go beyond it, the book dares to chart a great ocean of enmity known as the Pacific and the brave men who fought.

Pacific Islands Writing

Pacific Islands Writing
Author: Michelle Keown
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2007-10-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 019152798X

The Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English. The first book of its kind, Pacific Islands Writing offers a broad-ranging introduction to the postcolonial literatures of the Pacific region. Drawing upon metaphors of oceanic voyaging, Michelle Keown takes the reader on a discursive journey through a variety of literary and cultural contexts in the Pacific, exploring the Indigenous literatures of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, and also investigating a range of European or Western writing about the Pacific, from the adventure fictions of Herman Melville, R. L. Stevenson, and Jack London to the Päkehä (European) settler literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book explores the relevance of 'international' postcolonial theoretical paradigms to a reading of Pacific literatures, but it also offers a region-specific analysis of key authors and texts, drawing upon indigenous Pacific literary theories, and sketching in some of the key socio-historical trajectories that have inflected Pacific writing. Well-established Indigenous Pacific authors such as Albert Wendt, Witi Ihimaera, Alan Duff, and Patricia Grace are considered alongside emerging writers such as Sia Figiel, Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. The book focuses primarily upon Pacific literature in English - the language used by the majority of Pacific writers - but also breaks new ground in examining the growing corpus of francophone and hispanophone writing in French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Easter Island/Rapa Nui.

Postcolonial Pacific Writing

Postcolonial Pacific Writing
Author: Michelle Keown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2004-12-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134423683

This major new interdisciplinary study focuses on the representation of the body in the work of eight of Polynesia's most significant contemporary writers. Drawing on anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history and medicine, Postcolonial Pacific Writing develops an innovative postcolonial framework specific to the literatures and cultures of this region.

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (The Pacific War Trilogy)

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (The Pacific War Trilogy)
Author: Ian W. Toll
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 732
Release: 2011-11-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393083179

Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction "Both a serious work of history…and a marvelously readable dramatic narrative." —San Francisco Chronicle On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible—through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies—tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative.

Political Life Writing in the Pacific

Political Life Writing in the Pacific
Author: Jack Corbett
Publisher: Anu Press
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2015
Genre: Authorship
ISBN: 9781925022605

The collection touches on aspects of the life writing art that are particularly pertinent to political figures: public perception and ideology; identifying important political successes and policy initiatives; grappling with issues like corruption and age-old political science questions about leadership and dirty hands.

Writing the Pacific

Writing the Pacific
Author: Jen Webb
Publisher: [email protected]
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2007
Genre: Pacific Island fiction (English)
ISBN: 9789823660165

"Writing the Pacific is a new anthology of stories and poems that re-envisions the myths, traditions and lived reality of 'Pacific-ness'."--Book jacket.

After Henry

After Henry
Author: Joan Didion
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1504045696

Incisive essays on Patty Hearst and Reagan, the Central Park jogger and the Santa Ana winds, from the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West. In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album “capture[s] the mood of America” and confirms her reputation as one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers (The New York Times). Whether dissecting the 1988 presidential campaign, exploring the commercialization of a Hollywood murder, or reporting on the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion proves that she is one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century, “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review). Highlights include “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” a portrait of the White House under the stewardship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, two “actors on location;” and “Girl of the Golden West,” a meditation on the Patty Hearst case that draws an unexpected and insightful parallel between the kidnapped heiress and the emigrants who settled California. “Sentimental Journeys” is a deeply felt study of New York media coverage of the brutal rape of a white investment banker in Central Park, a notorious crime that exposed the city’s racial and class fault lines. Dedicated to Henry Robbins, Didion’s friend and editor from 1966 until his death in 1979, After Henry is an indispensable collection of “superior reporting and criticism” from a writer on whom we have relied for more than fifty years “to get the story straight” (Los Angeles Times).

The Pacific and Other Stories

The Pacific and Other Stories
Author: Mark Helprin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2005-06-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101644338

A dazzling collection of short stories by Mark Helprin, bestselling author of Winter's Tale, which is now a major motion picture starring Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe, William Hurt, and Jennifer Connelly The Pacific and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen stories that display the remarkable scope, incomparable wit, and deft prose that have come to be Mark Helprin's signature. A British paratrooper jumps into occupied territory; the 1958 New York Yankees gain an unexpected teammate in a puny, teenaged Hasidic Jew; a September 11th widow receives an astonishing gift from the contractor working on her new apartment—these and other stories exhibit the constantly changing variety of the ocean itself, the peaks and troughs of life. Lighthearted, glittering fables are met with starker tales that sound the depths of sacrifice and duty. The Pacific and Other Stories is a resplendent, powerful collection of lasting substance and emotional import.