- Chapters covering unification of the kingdom, contact with westerners, the Mahele, the influence of the sugar industry, and the overthrow of the monarchy, rewritten for easier readability - New color illustrations, including paintings by Herb Kawainui K ne, never-before-published portraits of the monarchs, vintage postcards, and then and now photographs - Photographs, drawings, and primary source documents from local archives and collections - Challenging vocabulary defined in the text margins - Appendixes covering the formation of the islands, Hawai'i's geography, and Polynesian migration - A timeline and a bibliography

The arrival of Captain Cook and the debates concerning the territory's admission to statehood are given equal attention in this detailed history.

Not since Willam A. Bryan's 1915 landmark compendium, Hawaiian Natural History, has there been a single-volume work that offers such extensive coverage of this complex but fascinating subject. Illustrated with more than two dozen color plates and a hundred photographs and line drawings, Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution updates both the earlier publication and subsequent works by compiling and synthesizing in a uniform and accessible fashion the widely scattered information now available. Readers can trace the natural history of the Hawaiian Archipelago through the book's twenty-eight chapters or focus on specific topics such as island formation by plate tectonics, plant and animal evolution, flightless birds and their fossil sites, Polynesian migrational history and ecology, the effects of humans and exotic animals on the environment, current conservation efforts, and the contributions of the many naturalists who visited the islands over the centuries and the stories behind their discoveries. An extensive annotated bibliography and a list of audio-visual materials will help readers locate additional sources of information.