Gavan Daws' remarkable achievement is to free Hawaiian history from the dust of antiquity. Based on years of work in the documentary sources, Shoal of Time emerges as the most readable of all Hawaiian histories.

Starting with the Western discovery of the islands in 1778--on through the days of the whalers, the missionary period, the plantation era with its vast numbers of Oriental immigrants, to the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy, annexation by the United States, and the long, slow move to statehood--the characters and events of Hawaii's past shine with new vitality and immediacy....