really shocked. a well-known family and admired family and cynthia was a school bus drivers. tour was very distant lovely child and everyone was completely stunned. .. >> the author recounts the 1893 coup organized by the missionaries that deposed the last hawaiian queen, liluokalani kailulani and led to the ann annexation of the states.

>> you have microphones everywhere here. l[laughter] >> i'm going to read a little bit and ask questions, like every other reading you've been to. [laughter] >> why is there a glop of macaroni because they left with the first boatload of new england missionaries bound for hawaii in 1819. that in its saturday rainbow drive-in only serves chicken. a bannian for kaikiki of a tourist of a lukewarm box of takeout none of us bring here not me the not the macaroni soaked in soy sauce and not even the troy. like a lot of people and things

bannions are imports from somewhere else in this case india. they drip down and bore solely booth root and to support more and more ten drills leading to more and more trunks until its tree becomes its own little forest. there's a tree in lahaina in maui to celebrate the arrival of new england missionaries on that island. it was 8 feet tall when a missionary descendent planted it and now it stands over 60 feet high with 12 trunks standing more than 200 square feet. one time i was in the lai hutchinson ani white house chatting would woman who worked there about the bannion. she told me the town gardener put a lot of effort in confining that tree in the square because otherwise it would keep on growing until its roots and branches cracked the foundations and punctured the walls of all

the nearby buildings finally toppling everything in its path. in fact, the tree's tendency to crowd out and to destroy its neighbors had earned the pet name strangler fig. here in the aiki kirk the u.s. army museum is hunkererd down in the high-rise condominiums built in the 1959 statehood architectural style i like to think of as a very brady brutalism. [laughter] >> the park where i was sitting appears in an old black and white photograph on display there. the picture was taken in the summer of 1898 a few days after the sons of missionaries who had dethrone the hawaiian queen handed over hawaii to the united states. the park is pitched with the tents with the first new york voluntary infantry. the spanish-american war had the soldiers stopping off in this suddenly american city en route to the philippines to persuade

the filipino people at gunpoint that self-government really isn't for everyone. [laughter] >> they named their encampment after the president who dispatched them here, camp mckinley. the united states declared war on spain in april of 1898. by august, the mckinley administration had invaded the spanish colonies of cuba, puerto rico, the philippines and guam and annexed hawaii. in this four-month orgy became imperialial. horegard theodore roosevelt wrote from cuba when he heard the u.s. annexed the island. he was inthe caribbean in the rough riders. one of the end results of that conquest was american control of guantanamo bay. to roosevelt and his like-minded cronies in the government and

military the most important objective of all the ann 98 maneuvers was possession of far-flung islands for naval bases and strategic ports like guantanamo and honolulu's pearl harbor. he and his friends had pined for these bases for years the way a normal man envisioned his dream house. all they ever wanted was a cozy little global empire with a few islands here and there to park a battle of ships. that japanese dive bomber sank four of those battleships in pearl harbor on december 7th 1941. that's how i got interested in hawaii a few years ago. the purpose of my initial visit was a quit jaunt to see the uss arizona monument perched above the oily grave of the 1,077 sailors who died on that ship that day. unlike the flip-floppers wearers

on my trip for honolulu i did not come here for direct sunlight or fun. [laughter] >> i had come to hawaii because it had been attacked. after i checked the arizona off my to-do list, i still had some time left and i went to the liluokalani palace, which is the only palace in the hundreds a guide led my tour group into the room where the white businessmen and sugar planters who had staged a coup d'etat locked the queen up after her royalist supporters botched a counter-revelation. while her imprisonment in a room of the second floor of a palace sewing a colorful quilt out of display perhaps out of melancholy or spite little kingdom of hawaii stand around the quilt center square. in one corner she embordered a

cartoonish man struggling with an umbrella with losing his hat in the wind. i wonder if the lament of a woman whose crown has plea away and isn't coming back. i should mention i was there in december 2003. american soldiers captured saddam hussein who was hiding in his grungy spider hole outside of tikrit so when i was standing in the victorian museum of a poll kneesian queen deposed by the the sons of churchy new englanders and at that time the iraqi dictator was behind bars in a u.s. military compound being guarded by pennsylvanians. not that the queen a constitutional monarch and an accomplished musician famous for writing the love song aloha aloy

and a man who cashed kurds still has a lot in common but there's an identifiable link between the two overthrows and an american tendency to indulge in what trendy government lingo at the time was calling regime change. when the tour guide mentioned the hawaiian grounds was lowered and the american flag went up, she looked like she was going to cry. i couldn't help but picture that scene from the tv news earlier in the year when a u.s. soldier celebrated the invasion of baghdad of climbing up the stature and covering it with stars and stripe and improper flag etiquette. pearl harbor is tattooed on another memory and another forgotten american site we have

forgotten entirely. it's considered a betrayal of american ideals. the subtext of the dissent was, this is not who we are. none of you was standing where i was. it's hard to look in the tour guide's eyes when she talked about the american flag flying over the palace and not realize ever since 1898 from time to time this is exactly who we are. and once more, hawaii is just as theodore roosevelt circle predicted, crucial to the american empire's military presence in the pacific. pearl harbor is still the headquarters of u.s. pacific command just as it was for all three of america's 20th century wars in the pacific with japan, north korea and north vietnam. so i started looking into hawaii's big part in the epic of american global domination. americans and their children spent the 78 years between the

arrival of protestant missionaries and the americanizing of hawaii, importing our favorite religion, capitalism and our second favorite religion christianity. in certain ways, the americanization of hawaii in the 19th century parallels the americanization of america. just as their puritan forebe forebearers into the new england the new england missionaries sent sail for the sandwich islands a place they thought of as a spiritual wilderness. perhaps 9 out of tern natives of the americas were wiped out by contact with european diseases, so was the native hawaiian population ravaged by smallpox, measles, whooping cough and venereal disease and the building of the railroads brought in the huddled masses of immigrants to the united states, the sugar plantations founded by the sons of the missionaries

required massive imports of labor, primarily from china, japan, korea, portugal and the philippines transforming hawaii into what it has become. a multiethnic miscellaneous in which every race is a minority. hence the plate lunch. two scoops of japanese style rice and one scoop of macaroni salad seemingly airlifted from church potluck in anywhere usa are served alongside a polynesian or asian protein such as pig, chicken, teriyaki beef or loco moco a hamburger patty on top with gravy and egg invented what has always been the hamburger's most obvious defect not enough egg. [laughter] >> sugar plantation workers used to share food at lunchtime, tossing tofu and chinese noodles and portuguese bread that habit

of hodgepodge had passed down now served at diners, drive-ins and lunch trucks throughout the hawaiian area. in 1961, the late leader established the rainbow drive-in, the joint on the edge of waikiki where i bought my plate lunch. if he had been an army cook with the 100th infantry battalion, the mostly hawaiian born japanese-american volunteer soldiers and the 142nd group becoming the most decorated unit in the american history and earning the nickname the purple heart battalion. their motto was remember pearl harbor. and their argument that they were americans not as the u.s. u.s. government classified them and their families enemy aliens. rainbow drive-in's menu offering teriyaki hot dogs, mahi mahi

reads like america is supposed to be a neighborly mish mash. president obama mentioned once on a trip home his craving for plate lunch. listing rainbow drive-in as a possible stop. it made sense considering his kansan mother met his kenyan forty at the university of hawaii and his mother remarriage blessed him with a half indonesian sister. he's our first plate lunch president. [laughter] >> i see the history of hawaii as a painful tale of native loss combined with an idealistic multiethnic saga symbolized by mixed plates in which soy sauce and mayonnaise peacefully coexist and congeal tracked with how i see the history of the united states in general. i'm the descendent of cherokees who are marched at gunpoint by the u.s. army to oklahoma on the trail of tears. yet, i'm also and mostly the

descendent of european immigrants, notably swedish peasants who left for kansas for the same reason asian and portuguese plantation workers sailed to hawaii. whenever i eat plate lunch, i always think back to the lure of my swedish great grandfather's voyage across the atlantic. supposedly the only food he brought with him on the ship was a big hunk of cheese and he befriended a german in steerage was a big hunk of sausage. growing up i came to know america as two places. a rapacious country built on the destruction of its original inhas beenants -- inhabitants and those who shared their sausage and their cheese. [laughter] >> in 1899, the british poet published a famous poem the

white man's burden about the new american empire of island colony of new sullen peoples. four years earlier when kipling visited washington, d.c., for the first time he met theodore roosevelt. roosevelt dragged kipling to the smithsonian to show off glass cases full of american indian artifacts. kipling later wrote, i never got over the wonder of a people who having expatriatiated the abridgeneyals saying they were a godly new england community setting examples to brutal mankind. of the side countries the united states invaded or conquered, hawaii is the only one it became a state. even though hawaii has been a state since 1959 and an american territory since 1898, a small

but defiant network of native activists question the legality of both developments and do not consider themselves to be americans at all which is easy to pick up on when they are marching down the main drag of honolulu carrying picket signs saying that we are not americans. [laughter] [applause] >> so if you have questions, a microphone carrier will find you. >> hi. i know you mentioned your nephew owen in your book and how is he doing and how old is he now in >> owen my nephew is almost 11.

how is he doing? you know, i don't know. i haven't seen him in a while. i did just see him -- i do like to travel. a few weeks ago we went to some mayan ruins in mexico and guatemala and, i don't know, he's quite a budding wordsmith. [laughter] >> he asked if he could sit next to me on the plane home. i was like i don't know. are you going to be a total pill? [laughter] >> he was like maybe a chewable. [laughter] >> yes. >> i'm real curious how you go about doing your research? like what is your process from start to finish? >> what is my process from start to finish? well, let's see. you know, i read -- i read a

bunch of books first, a lot of -- i read some of the official histories, then i read some, you know, primary documents or diaries, memoirs, that kind of thing. i had a lot of missionary memoirs this time, lucky me. [laughter] >> and, you know, official biographies of all of the, you know, players. and then -- and then i just start going and doing reporting trips where in this case i went to back and forth from my home in new york city to the island, i think, seven or eight times. i would say sometimes for a week, sometimes for several weeks where i would, you know, rent an apartment, including one in the building that jack lord stands up on top in the opening credits of hawaii 5-0. and on this one i spent a lot of times in archives in honolulu, the mission houses, which houses the missionary papers, reading all of their letters and diaries

and then the state archives of hawaii which has a lot of the government papers and the monarchy papers. and the bishop museum archives and, you know, they have various treasures and artifacts and also, you know, just reading a lot of old newspapers on microfilm, the whaling newspaper, that kind of stuff. and then also going to historic sites and interviewing curators and tour guides and then i did some other interviews with various locals, you know, some of them independent activists, you know, one of my interviews with a woman who became a good friend of mine who was a missionary descendent, that kind of thing. yes. oh, sorry. oh, sorry, microphone. [laughter] >> hi, sarah. >> hi. >> i was curious to know if you saw the annexation of hawaii as maybe having some sort of modern

ripple effect and causing the birther movement? >> [laughter] >> correct me if i'm wrong, the birthers, not a word i enjoy saying because i like english. [laughter] >> correct me if i'm wrong, i don't know that they're entirely up to speed on the history of hawaii in the 1890s. i believe their focus and concerns are more prompted by anger at who the president is and trying to find ways to, you know, not make him be the president. unless i'm wrong about that. [laughter] >> so i don't really think there's too much -- i mean, i guess the two things are vague if the united states had never annexed hawaii a person born in honolulu would not be eligible

to be president and, therefore, not garner such, you know, loathing as the current one. but, no, i don't think they're that linked. but i'm not sure. [laughter] >> yes. you pick. >> i want you to know i drove 3.5 hours to be here with you. >> thank you. >> i'm from laredo. >> wow! there's a button with my face on it. >> it's next to my heart. i'm also 38 years old so there's potential there. [laughter] >> you've been on tv shows -- like the last one was david letterman is he like hmmm or is he like hmmm? [laughter] >> i mean -- >> david letterman -- >> welhat am i supposed to say? [laughter] >> i think david letterman, you

know, is kind of a youthful hero of mine and he's actually a real reader who has always been nothing but nice to me and my books, so i have nothing but kind thoughts for the man, which makes a terrible story. [laughter] >> oh, he's very nice to me and helps me sell my books. [laughter] >> it's a terrible story. [laughter] >> but, you know, i write nonfiction and you got to tell the truth. [laughter] >> but thanks for driving. [laughter] >> the rest of you probably like rode your hippy bikes here. [laughter] >> so when you -- when you -- when you're coming up with an idea for the next thing that you want to work on, do you come up with a bunch of ideas or things stick with you and are you sitting around one day saying, yep, that's it? >> yep. it's different every time, but

like i don't have my next idea so, sure, i have a million ideas every day, almost all of them lame at this point. [laughter] >> but you kind of know it when you see it. like the last book, my one about the puritans -- i started -- i mean, i always wanted to write about the puritans, i mean, who doesn't? [laughter] >> 'cause i love john winthrop's sermon and i had been thinking about them for a while but i really started writing that book after ronald reagan's funeral and that sermon was read at his funeral. because it's the sermon where we get the image of the new america as a city upon a hill, it's a sermon about charity and generosity and that it was so closely associated with president reagan, a president whose administration was not about charity and generosity.

it was, in fact, about gutting every social program designed to help one's fellow man. that's the little kick i needed to get cracking. i thought it was a good time to revisit that speech just because, you know, winthrop in that sermon and we should be a city of a hill and to him it was two-sided. yes, it could turn out the way we talk about that image now that, you know, this place eventually the united states then just new england would be as a city upon a hill would be a beacon of hope and light, you know, to the world, but winthrop also meant it two ways, the second way being, we could fail and everyone could see our failure, you know, we'll be up there and everyone will have a great view of our failure and he

defined that failure as the colonists' failure to take care of one another. so that's why that one. [laughter] >> yes. >> sarah, i noticed -- >> hi. >> on your food plate you didn't say anything about poi and jim nabors still have his show over there? >> i don't know what's been happening with jim nabors in the last 40 years. [laughter] >> but what about poi? poi is still a very prized food amongst the hawaiians. it's not just a staple food. it's an object of almost religious devotion. it's the mashed tarro root. i personally -- let's say i

haven't craved it for a while, since i left hawaii. i mean, there's a whole story there, you know, one of the -- one of the people i interviewed, a doctor, who's grandmother had worked for the last queen of hawaii. he walked me through the creation myth. i sat down to interview him and i asked him a question about the overthrow of the queen in 1893, and he answered by going back to the beginning of time. [laughter] >> as you can imagine, it was a very long interview. [laughter] >> and during that -- during when he was talking about the beginning of time he talked about, you know, the earth mother mating with the sky father and all that and -- the object of the union was this stillborn. and when that child was buried up sprouted the first tarro plant and then the next sibling

was the first human. so the people saw the tarro plant as the older sibling and the number one sibling's job is to take care of all the younger siblings. the tarro is the staple food and it's not just, you know, like what a cheese steak is in philly. it's a member of the family, kind of. so it's been very cherished for very long. but then, you know, a lot of the -- it's -- it's a rare plant. it has been for the last, you know, century or so just because so much of the land that used to be used to grow the tarro got turned into sugar plantations. >> hi. >> hello. >> i know i don't like these things. oh, my goodness. okay. all right. all right.

can i sing, crystal gail, i'm kidding. i have to say who's your favorite author? >> who's my favorite author? >> two parts. yes, i'm curious. >> i don't really have one favorite author. there are two, but i return to again and again when i'm writing. like if i'm stuck and i just want to, you know, revive myself, and not just give up and, you know, eat cereal in front of television or something. [laughter] >> and one of them is moby dick. i'll always, you know, just crack it open and random and read for a little bit. and its language is so weird and the sorry is so strange and it's just -- it just reminds me of -- i mean, it's a

book -- i mean, there's so many books on you. well, not to say that because there's not enough, there's not enough -- not the way that congress is going right now.

so but -- >> about the cherokee? >> uh-huh. >> i did write one very long essay about the trail of tears that's in my essays but there's a little bit -- i do revisit some of the history of that tribe in this hawaii book just because it's the same organization in boston, the american board of commissioners for foreign missions. they're the group that sent the missionaries to hawaii. they're also the group that sent missionaries to the cherokee nation and christianized, westernized the cherokee. and, you know, that same group started the school up in connecticut for heathen youths where all these ships, new england ships, you know, and the china trade was coming back from all these kids from all over the world. and some of them were put in this school including the boy who's basically the first

hawaiian christian and two of the -- two of the cherokee men -- they studied these boys and they were a couple of ones who signed that treaty against the will of the rest of the tribe that gave the u.s. government permission, sort of legally, to start the trail of tears. so there is a real concrete connection, but that group both missionaries really got around. [laughter] >> here's one. i don't know. hi. >> hi. i also drove 3.5 up from corpus. [laughter] >> do you have any words -- libraries have been important or i would assume so in your research and as a former librarian because budget cuts are awesome. do you have any words to advocate to any, you know -- just telling how important libraries have been to your

process? >> oh! in case texas legislators are watching c-span at 7:00 am on sunday morning. [laughter] >> i had to try. >> i mean, i'm not going to -- i'm not going to reinvent the wheel. yes, libraries have been very important to me. that's where the books are. [laughter] >> i mean, when i was -- i spent the first 11 years of my life in a tiny, tiny, tiny town in oklahoma that had no library. at the school there was one shelf that had some books on it and you could take those home. but, you know, you run through those books pretty quick. and when i was 11 years old, my family moved to a college town in montana that had more than one library. [laughter] >> you know, and that first summer my -- i mean, and so we liked to roller skate and so that the first summer we spent -- i mean, moving from

oklahoma to montana probably -- it sounds like one sticks to another but it was a college town and it was like basically we moved to paris and that first magical summer and we had roller skates and sidewalks and we would roller skate to the library every day, you know, and we just thought we had moved to civilization. no offense, oklahoma. [laughter] >> and, you know, i would -- when i was in high school, i would skip school a lot. i would -- that doesn't sound good. stay in school, kids. i would skip school and go to the library, you know? i mean, library is not just like for my work as a writer, obviously. i mean, in this book i would work with archivists and librarians at those institutions i mentioned in hawaii. i mean, some of that would be impossible without them, you know? you know, i can't tell you what

you can learn from microfilm of old newspapers and -- i mean, and not all of that or even much of it has been digitized and is available, you know, widely. so -- i mean, i can't even -- i can't imagine -- libraries are just so crucial and vital. i don't even know how to talk about life without them, you know? it's like oh, there aren't going to be any more eggs anymore, like what? so i don't -- yeah, i wish i had something super zippy to say about it. i mean, i do think they're so important. i mean, you don't know how great a library is unless you were born into a town that doesn't have one. i'll put it that way. >> thank you. >> sure. [applause]

>> we lived in hawaii years ago. and we knew the history and all that but it's interesting how the natives are conflicted about being americans, being hawaiians. and it is a different state to live in. it is, like i said, interesting how they don't always consider themselves part of the united states. but it got to be very aggravating to go over and visit and say well, back in the states or back in the u.s. we would say you are in the u.s. or we would go back to visit and hear people say, well, how -- now that you're back in the u.s., we'd say we're living in the u.s. we are in awahawaii.

well, hawaii is not really a state and things like that. it's been as long as i can remember back in 1959. i guess you heard a lot -- you heard that in -- >> well, i watched -- i think those shows jack paar did -- i think it's right after statehood and he does ask this crowd of people, what do you think of the united states? and they all yelled back, you're in it. i guess some of that dislocation -- i think some of that is just a byproduct of what happens when, you know, one country on a continent, you know, colonizes an island thousands of miles from its shore. in some ways, yeah, it's so -- in some ways it's a completely american place to me just because it's so militaristic. there are military bases and training grounds everywhere. it's exceedingly religious.

there's a lot of really crummy commercial architecture, which is a bit of a specialty in this country. there's so many things about it -- i mean, especially -- and then you have all those hotels and resorts with all the hotels and the resorts and then all the military bases, it's, you know -- there's a writer i really like named steve ericson who once wrote that the two great contributions of the american civilization are annihilation and fun. [laughter] >> and he was writing that about las vegas and a piece about, you know, all the old nuclear tests that were done in the nevada desert but that -- i think that metric applies to hawaii as well. i mean, but then on the other hand, you know, it is -- it is still so much so often the sovereign independent country it once was. you know, the language, even, you know, english speakers, people who would say they don't

speak hawaiian, hawaiian words are peppered into normal talk. if you were going to ask directions from someone, they would tell you to go maka, towards the mountains or towards the ocean. and there's -- i mean, it is such a singular place and it still has so many vestiges of its singular culture that it is kind of lost in a way, you know? that's maybe why "lost" was filmed there. [laughter] >> i have a friend -- he's a teacher and i was speaking to him and some of his colleagues and i was talking about some king and i was butchering his name. and the pronunciation. and i made some -- i just said, i hate saying hawaiian words in front of hawaiians and my friend was driving me home later and he said that's funny you called us hawaiian. i don't think myself of a hawaiian. i said what are you talking about.

you were born here. you lived here. you went to high school here. i know, but my family -- his ancestors came from japan and germany, and he just -- i don't know. and compared to -- it's like that in new york where i live, you know, it's this very disparate place with all these people from all over the world and all this different kind of food but everyone who's been there a while considers themselves new yorkers. it doesn't matter where you're from or where your ancestors are born or what color your skin is, whatever. it's just one big jumble. and there's this lost quality about hawaii and the identity of the place and the people. and that, i think, is, you know, a result of this kind of, i guess -- it's sort of kind of americanization and what

happened when the missionary offspring overthrew the hawaiian queen in 1893. it was kind of a severing from the hawaii past, you know -- one of the other things she did when she was locked up in that -- in her cell was she translated the creation myth, which is a genealogy that tells the story of hawaii from the beginning of time, from, you know, the slime that created the earth up to her own ancestors. and i think one reason she did that after her overthrow is she's thinking about that and that long, long, long aeons of hawaiian past that has just been, you know -- you know, severed. i think there's still, you know -- it's like what is that called when you have something is amputated. is it lost limb syndrome? phantom limbs, thank you. i think there's still -- there's always going to be that there.

i mean, it makes it a very fascinating place for that reason, you know. back here. >> back on the subject of book ideas, i've always want to find out where you came up with the idea of -- [inaudible] >> book ideas, where i came up with the idea for my book on presidential assassinations. i don't know. i don't remember. i think i was writing a lot about president lincoln and it must have just occurred to me in some of my lincoln research. i don't have a snappy story. >> i find your style really dry and funny so i was wondering if you ever entertained the idea of branching out in fiction 'cause you mentioned --

>> no. [laughter] >> that question which comes up a lot is such an insult to nonfiction. [laughter] >> just because something is true -- no, no, i'm not a liar. [laughter] >> there are times of other liars whose books you're welcome to buy here. the thing i love about nonfiction, it does not have to be plausible, you know? nonfiction is about things that -- like that can't be true, but it is. [laughter] >> fiction you have to write these stories that seemed like it could have happened to people who might exist. so you don't have to do that when you're writing about a weirdo like abraham lincoln or, you know -- i mean, even in this hawaiian story, one thing that's -- that happens is, as the first missionaries are leaving boston harbor, well,

they're on route to common and christianized the hawaiian, while they're on the way -- while they're on the water, the new hawaiian king decides to abolish the old religion. you put that in one of your fiction-type stories, that's just going to seem, you know, no! that's too easy. but then the missionaries show up and they get the news, guess what? the old religion has been banned and outlawed and there's nothing to replace it. and here we just sailed into this spiritual vacuum to you know, sow or christian lairs and it seemed like god was on their side. but if you put that in a made-up story i mean, it just wouldn't work. 'cause it just is unbelievable. [laughter] >> or like, you know, about that story of how john adams and thomas jefferson died on the same day and it's the 50th

anniversary of the declaration of independence? it's july 4th, 1826. if you put that in a novel, that would be so laughable. [laughter] >> but, you know, it's fact. and, therefore, it can be as, you know, implausible as possible, anyway, fiction. [laughter] >> i know i'm a groupie and i preorder everything you write as soon as i hear it's coming out. >> thank you very much. >> however, this one -- >> oh, where is this going? [laughter] >> when this came out "unfamiliar fishes." i had no idea what you were going to be writing about -- >> that's because i hate subtitles. go on. [laughter] >> what inspired you to use that title? >> oh, it is -- a quotation

from -- from a letter written by one of the first hawaiian writers. his name is david mallo and he was almost 30 years old when the first missionaries arrived on maui, the island where he lived at the time. and they taught him how to read and write. hawaii -- he was well schooled in the hawaiian oral tradition but the missionaries from new england had to invent a written language for hawaiian so they taught -- they taught him and some other people to read in fact pretty much the entirety of the hawaiian population within a generation. and within a few years, he was writing his book "hawaiian antiquities" which is a compendium of sort of knowledge on the classical hawaiian culture that was dying away thanks to the coming of the westerners. and it's a very -- it's a very beautiful, very useful book. but -- and he became -- he was very -- he was under the influence of these new

englanders being to learn and write. he became a teacher and a minister. and -- but being a writer, which is to say grumpy and full of misgivings, as you saw -- as the years wore on and you saw more and more white people kind of drowning his homeland and not just the missionaries, maui where he lived was one of those stopping points for whalers during the golden age of whaling so there are hundreds of whaling ships stopping in hawaiian ports at the same time. so as he saw all of these white people coming in, moving in, sailors dropping by and they are not the ones to make this big impression he wrote these sadler to these native friends that went something like -- i'll try to get it right. when a big wave comes in, large -- when a large and unfamiliar fishes come from the dark ocean and they see the

small fishes of the shallows and they will eat them up. and then he says the big men from the important countries come here and see that our people are small, they will devour us. so it was kind of prophetic. but i also liked just pulling "unfamiliar fishes" out of it because my book is about these americans. and the americans who came to hawaii during that time of the 19th century they are not regular joe americans, you know? you got your bible-something killjoys. you've got your sailors on leave and then a bunch of capitalists and con men and other kind of dreamers. so these -- something about just pulling that out "unfamiliar fishes" kind of captured that -- it's about these kind of singular types who ended up

there. >> we have time for one more question. >> your first book was a media study from a listeners point of view. have you thought about doing one now that you have been on the other side with npr and your television appearances? >> oh, you want to read a diary of me going -- like going on book tour and talking to -- talking to interviewers? yeah, no, that hadn't occurred to me. [laughter] >> i will say that was my first year listening to the radio and it was a prison sentence and it's been more than a decade that i was, you know, let out. so, no, i mean, one thing about that form -- it was -- you know, i had to listen to the radio every day. i don't know if you ever listen to the radio but it was kind of trying as a project, but i do think there is something in that

form -- it definitely captured the time, you know, the year i listened was 1995 and -- i mean, i mean, i don't really listen to a lot of different kinds of radio so much anymore, but at the time i can't imagine that it's gotten more violent the talk, you know? like when i turned on the radio, i think maybe on the first day -- this is right before oklahoma city, before, you know -- before -- especially with the right wing talk radio that people started wondering, hey, maybe you shouldn't talk like that all the time. you know, and the reason i wrote it was because -- because of the 1994 congressional elections. and the freshmen congressman, when the republicans took over the congress, called themselves the ditto head caucus and i thought radio is having a huge impact on the country and i was kind of unaware of that side of it. but, you know, i would hear before oklahoma city -- you

know, i heard maybe on the first day a kid with a paper route calling in a talk show saying there's this other kid trying to horn in on my paper route and the host would say, oh, you got to get a gun. they said it in jest and maybe a week i was visiting my parents in montana and there was a big snowstorm and there was so much snow that the streets weren't plowed yet and i went cross country skiing in the middle of the night and it was so fluffy and white and wonderful and, you know, i came back and turned on the radio and there was some person saying that you can't solve the problem of the welfare mothers and illegal immigrants by giving the welfare mothers jobs by posting them at the border to gun down all the illegal immigrants. when i say it was a prison sentence, i'm saying it's not like, oh, it was really hard having to hear slayer songs all day long. it was very dark and violent and

terrible, things i had to listen to, you know, so i don't -- yeah. i mean, i think we forget -- we forget that. i mean, i don't know. i would like to forget it, but i can't. and then after, you know, oklahoma city, when that happened, there was something president clinton said that stuck with me when that happened. he said, you know, there's talk of hate, stand up and talk against it. and that was something that was nice to hear after, you know, a few months of listening to violent calls to murder in between commercials. [laughter] >> so i don't see recreating that experience, lovely as it was. but i did -- i mean, it was -- it was my first book and i learned a lot by writing and publishing it. it's a very like dark and i think kind of angry raw book, but i think that comes from what

i had to listen to. i think we can have one more question just -- and could it be slightly more hopeful? [laughter] >> that's not from your question. that's me and the darkness. >> i'll have to work on hopeful, i think. i was curious, do you see a parallel between the missionary effort that you write about in here and the dulles brothers who enjoyed life in the '50s? >> i don't know who the delles brothers are. >> john foster dulles. >> oh, i've been to that airport, uh-huh. >> who brought us the overthrow -- >> oh! some of the other american regime changes? >> yeah. >> it does seem to be a habit of ours, you know. we don't like the guy running guatemala. i know what we can do or, you know, we don't like the guy running iran. i mean, these things do kind of -- or, you know, we don't like the guy running cuba, that

kind of thing. i mean, the thing -- it's one thing for a government to want to hope for foreign leaders who would perhaps -- if not act in our interest at least, you know -- you know. but the thing about the united states is, at our founding -- in the declaration of independence, you know, defines our belief -- our theory of government is that it should be based on the consent of the governed. so by definition, the idea that americans would go abroad and try and like monkey with other countries' rulers is a contradiction, you know? it is at best hypocritical. is that what you're talking about? >> well, yeah, and also the religious fervor -- >> well, the thing about -- the difference with hawaii is the missionaries, the original missionaries, the ones who came

in the 1820s and '30s, they weren't the one who overthrew the queen. it was their children. the ones who were born in hawaii. most of them go to the school founded by the missionaries. it's the one that our president went to. it's those children, the hawaii-born hawaiians -- or they were hawaiians subjects who overthrew the queen and to them religion played very little role. the queen was a more devout christian than any of those guys were. the original missionaries in hawaii had as their -- they were supposed to westernize and civilize the hawaiians as best they could but they had strict instructions not to mess with the government and not get involved with political affairs because political affairs are of this earth and they were to be concerned with getting as many hawaiian into the kingdom of heaven as possible. and most of them really stuck to that. a few of them did quit the

mission to go on and work for the hawaiian government, but they -- they had to quit their jobs as missionaries to do that. you know, there was one ex-missionary who helped with the framing of a new constitution when the hawaiian king made hawaii into a constitutional monarchy. there was one missionary who quit the mission to work in the judiciary because he obtained to the fact that the headquarters back in boston was taking donations from slave states. this is before the civil war. so the actual -- the actual missionaries did more or less stick to their plan, partly because they just didn't have time to do anything else. these were incredibly burdened overloaded people who -- i mean, look at what they did. they had -- so they wanted to -- they wanted to make everyone christians and because they're protestant that means they need everyone to be reading their bibles, they have to a, invent the written language and then, b, translate the bible and

because they are new englanders they translate the bible from greek and hebrew into hawaiian and they have to publish that. then they have to teach everyone to read and run the schools and preach their sermons, you know, and because it's a monarchy, they have a lot of other commands and demands that the aristocrats place on them. the missionary wives were having to drop everything and sew new dresses for the queens and the chiefly women. and there's just so much -- and they had to, you know, build their houses and build their churches. they were so overworked and overburdened that they really didn't have time to, you know, do any coup d'etating, but their children -- their children -- you know, their children did. and religious really had very little to do with it because like sanford dole, the man after the overthrow who becomes the president of the republic of hawaii, he and the queen -- you

know, they went to the same church and he taught sunday school and she led the choir, you know, she was -- she was a solid christian. and, in fact, in her book, her memoir, which i recommend it's called hawaii story by hawaii's queen, she -- she had -- she writes the book. it's her story but it's also -- she's publishing it in 1898 to argue against annexation. and she uses two arguments against annexation -- well, several but two of them being this doesn't seem christian. and she basically implies god will smite us if we do this to her little country and the other one is that it doesn't seem in keeping with, you know, the demands of democratic republican governments. so there's that. [laughter] >> i would like to thank you all for coming. thanks, austin. you've always been so good to me. [applause] >> i'll be upstairs signing books.

>> to find out more, visit the author on facebook at facebook.com/sarahjanevowell. >> long before he put his john hancock on the declaration of independence, he was arguably among -- arguably the wealthiest merchant banker in america living in an opulent mansion on top of boston's beacon hill with a commanding view of the massachusetts landscape and seascape. farther from espousing individual liberty, hancock and his fellow merchants in new england governed their businesses and communities with economic ruthlessness that often left their competitors homeless and penniless. like today's tea party movement, the colonial tea party had almost nothing to do with tea.

tea was nothing more than a social beverage for wealthy women. men seldom during that it. it ranked below ale and rum that americans consumed most. the tea party movement that sparked the american revolution actually began 20 years earlier, in the 1750s and '60s when new england business leaders, like today's tea partiers, supported a costly government war but refused to pay higher taxes to cover the cost of that war. the war had started in the early 1750s when overpopulation in the east, especially, the northeast, sent british settlers pouring over the appalachian mountains into what was then french territory. the novelle france they called it. france at the time claimed all of canada, the lands around the great lakes, the lands around on