Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Books | November/December 2003

Books
By Bob Dye

Paradise Found

Two selections for the holidays

Finding Paradise, by Don R. Severson, Michael D. Horikawa and Jennifer Saville, celebrates private collecting in Hawai'i. The scope of the featured collections ranges from stone sculpture and souvenir spoons to koa furniture and hula-girl kitsch.

Among the prominent collectors who allowed their Hawai'i collections to be photographed are: William E. Aull, Samuel and Mary Cooke, Dr. Bryson Greenwell, Jensen Lipton, Mr. and Mrs. Watters O. Martin Jr., Don Medcalf and Sharon and Thurston Twigg-Smith. The public has never before seen many of the featured items.

Experts introduce each category of collections. Derek McDonnell, for example, contributes an essay on 100 antiquarian books about Hawai'i. Martin teams with Tamara Moan to discuss souvenir spoons, and joins two others to write on jewelry. These essays are informative, well-crafted and scholarly.

Barbara Pope designed this book of more than 500 color photographs. Published by the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the University of Hawai'i Press, Finding Paradise deserves to be in every collection of fine books about Hawai'i ($79.95).

A Cup of Aloha, by Gerald Y. Kinro, is a modest paperback that celebrates "The Kona Coffee Epic." This is the story of Hawai'i's most famous morning brew, along with the men, women and children who nurtured the local industry to its present place of eminence.

Relying on oral history and an intimate knowledge of the Kona Coffee Belt on the Big Island, Kinro entertainingly intertwines the social, technical and economic aspects of coffee growing. The heroes of his story are not the investors, but the small growers, most of them immigrant Japanese.

The author, born and raised on a Kona coffee farm, is a pesticide expert with the Hawai'i Department of Agriculture. Kinro's book will enrich your next drive along the special 20 miles of Hawai'i's south coast ($17.95).

Books Archive