Archipelago: Portraits of Life in the World's Most Remote Island Sanctuary

Book Description

For this project, Middleton and Liittschwager gained unprecedented access to photograph on and around these protected islands that are otherwise completely off-limits to people. Home to nearly seventy percent of our nation's coral reefs, known as the "rainforests of the sea," the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands is a remarkable ecosystem that supports a vast array of interdependent native plants and animals that have evolved in this habitat over millions of years, many existing nowhere else on the planet.

The result is Archipelago. With its more than 300 stunning images, the book illustrates the spectacular diversity of these ocean and island creatures, as well as profiles many of the people dedicated to the preservation of this habitat. The inaccessibility of these islands and the need to protect them means that few people will ever be able to visit them in person, though now, for the first time, the area's inhabitants are available for all the world to see through this important body of work. In conjunction with the publication of Archipelago, exhibitions of these photographs will be mounted in Honolulu and Washington, and will then travel to venues around the country throughout 2006.

Customer Reviews:

A Gorgeous Book, but Shoddy Packing.......2007-10-09

I've lived in Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, where many of these photos were taken, for several months while working as a marine ecologist, so I've seen a large portion of these organisms, marine and terrestrial. Yet, despite the thousands of hours I've spent in the water there, Middleton and Liittschwager managed to find and photograph many organisms I've never seen before. Their photographs are unique because they mostly have a white background, so the organism is more starkly highlighted. Personally and as a marine ecologist, I think it's important to see the habitat and the other organisms that the organism may interact with, plus it's more interesting; however, that is what most fish or invertebrate books do and what any person with a camera or dive camera can do - Middleton and Liittschwager's technique is unique, much more difficult to accomplish, and therefore very special. Definitely a gorgeous book to keep on your coffee table - and a great way to see the organisms of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. One of my favorites is the group of images of one albatross growing up - from an egg to looking like an adult - I've always wanted to do that myself. This book will especially be a treasure for those lucky few who will visit Midway in the coming years as the new visitor program begins. I highly recommend it for those who have seen the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and those who haven't but want to.

Secondly, somehow this book was not packed very well. Others before me have commented on this, and I agree. I've ordered lots of things from Amazon and never seen this before; however, for an expensive book with glossy covers that you don't want to get scratched, it really wasn't packed very well. However, my copy was not damaged in any way, so no worries. I just think Amazon should talk to whoever is packing these books!!

Not that good.......2007-02-03

Like most people I purchased this book to use as a coffee table book. Although this book does have some nice images in it. It does not have the wow factor that you would normally expect from a good coffee table book. I would suggest purchasing Ocean by Robert Dinwiddie. (ISBN 0756622050). That book is 1000 times better (in content, pictures, and volume of material), and will keep you entertained much longer.

Exquisite look at hidden world.......2007-01-05

The northwest Hawaiian islands, stretching all the way to Midway are rarely visited because of their remoteness and fragility. This beautiful book gives a comprehensive tour of the area. The coffee table format allows the strange lands and creatures to be seen at their best. The authors' skill and dedication to their topic shows clearly in both photos and text. Recommended for all nature lovers.

5 for the Book, 3 for the Shipping.......2006-08-16

Like the other reviewer, my book was improperly shipped, this time in a box too large so it sloshed around on its journey, getting dinged in the process.

However, the book itself is magnificent. It is a gorgeous, comprehensive collection of images detailing the flora and fauna of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. This thriving Archipelago is beautiful in every sense of the word, and the intimate portraits that Middleton and LIttschwager have painstakenly produced of these creatures are superb. This is a jewel of a book, for photographic as well as conservationist reasons.

Beautiful book, inadequately packed.......2006-01-31

This is a magnificent book, with unique photgographs of sea creatures on white backgrounds. It would have made a splendid gift, except for the unfortunate fact that it was shipped in a box hardly bigger than itself and had obviously been dropped and crushed. Every page was dented, but it was too late to return it and get a new copy. One wonders why tiny objects are so often shipped in a box many times larger than themselves, but books like this one are tossed casually into the mail with no real protection at all.

The Exotic Plumeria, a pictorial, Volume 1

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Brilliant
Absolutely Awesome Book

The Exotic Plumeria, a pictorial, Volume 1
Alan W. Bunch
Manufacturer: The Exotic Plumeria Publishing Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0977755002

Product Description

The worlds first hardcover coffee-table book dedicated to the flowering plumeria tree. One hundred of the most beautiful plumeria flowers are pictured in stunning lifelike color and detail. Many cultivars are pictured for the first time as well as articles about plumeria culture and collecting. All pictures are "frameable" quality.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant.......2007-08-05

This is the best book yet for plumeria photo's that are true to life, the pictures are that good it makes you almost want to bend down and smell the pages. This is a must have for every plumeria lover and it will be well read once you do get a copy, especially if you have it on your coffee table. Even non plumeria growers will enjoy the photo's in these pages, they are just so vibrant , anyone that has an interest in flowers will be nothing short of amazed and find it hard to put down, I know I did.

Absolutely Awesome Book.......2006-06-22

All I can say is that this is the most fabulous book ever published on plumeria. The photography is absolutely outstanding. These pictures could very easliy be framed with great pride. It is obvious no cost was spared, down to very heavy paper stock the book is printed on. Great job and keep them coming.

Hawaii: The Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide (Ecotravellers Wildlife Guide: Hawaii)

Average customer rating:

Good Guide
The best Hawaiian wildlife guide yet.

Hawaii: The Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide (Ecotravellers Wildlife Guide: Hawaii)
Les Beletsky
Manufacturer: Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0120848139

Book Description

People travel to Hawaii for sun, sand, and surf but increasingly spend parts of their trips hiking, birdwatching, kayaking, whale-watching, or snorkeling in the island's stunning national parks and nature reserves. Ecotravellers to the islands know that Hawaii is a special place biologically, harboring many native animal and plant species that occur nowhere else on Earth. Contained in this book is all the information you need to find, identify, and learn about the island's magnificent animal life. The author visited parks and preserves, discussed wildlife with local and international experts, and then selected his color illustrations from more than 300 of the islands' most common fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds (including essentially every Hawaiian bird). You will want to have this easy-to-carry, entertainingly written, beautifully illustrated book as a constant companion on your trip.

Key Features
* Provides identifying, location, and conservation information on frequently spotted animals
* Gives up-to-date information on the ecology, behavior, and conservation of the families of animals to which the pictured species belong
* Contains information on Hawaiian habitats and on the most common plants you will see, and on the underwater animals most divers and snorklers actually see
* Gives brief descriptions of the state's national parks and nature reserves

Customer Reviews:

Good Guide.......2001-07-03

I like that this book because it actually rates hikes. I need an opinion when I am provided with such vast natural beauty to choose from as in Hawaii. He also tells you the best sights for spotting so apart from referencing wildlife, fauna and marine life as you come across you can seek it out. A good reference to use before and during your trip to the islands.

The best Hawaiian wildlife guide yet........2000-10-10

This is a natural history guide for someone who is really serious about gaining an in-depth understanding of Hawaii's natural environment, animals and plants. It's very complete and very well done (for the most part) and is the best one that I've seen about Hawai`i. Following the pattern of many other guidebooks, Beletsky's guide is divided into two sections. The first section (204 pages) is explanatory text while the second section (180 pages) consists of color drawings and photographs of Hawaii's flora and fauna.

The first half of the book is very comprehensive and is itself divided into basically two parts. Part "A" (6 chapters) covers ecotourism, Hawaii's natural history (including geography and climate), habitats, parks and preserves, getting around, environmental threats, conservation and how to use the book. Part "B" covers Hawaii's animals in just the right amount of detail (and in 6 more chapters). Each chapter explores a major animal group, such as "Amphibians and Reptiles," "Birds," "Mammals," etc. The chapters are well organized and they all include the same sections for each animal group. For example, the chapter on Mammals includes Mammals of Hawai`i, Characteristics of the Mammals, Family Profiles, and an "Environmental Close-up." Each of those sections then includes common subsections. It sounds tedious, but it actually works very well!

The second half of Beletsky's guide contains the color plates used for identifying all of the species described in the first half. They are beautifully done. Each animal has a brief description along with its names (common, Hawaiian and scientific), a habitat icon and a habitat description. There are also lots of interesting "factoids" in this guidebook.

One of the more interesting "environmental close-ups" is the one on spinner dolphins. They often travel with spotted dolphins and/or tuna in what is called a "mutualistic relationship" to protect themselves against sharks. Spinners feed during the night and spotteds feed during the day, so they trade off watching for sharks. They both like tuna schools around because the tuna are better than they are at sensing the presence of sharks; when the tuna take off, so do they!

While this is an excellent guidebook overall, I do have some complaints. The key to the habitat icons isn't anywhere near the color plates or in the index; it's way back on page 77 and very hard to find. Some of the sections are actually contributed by different people and I got tired of reading the same introductory comments about Hawaii's isolation and the evolution of endemic species over and over. The habitat pictures feel like they were just "thrown in" - they aren't captioned very well and they aren't matched to the habitat icons. The plant plates also feel "thrown in" - there isn't a matching chapter on plants in the first half of the book. Fixing those items would make it a "five out of five stars" book.

Average customer rating:

Beautiful journey to Hawaii

A Literary Lei - Flowers & Plants of Hawaii
Jim Wageman , and Virginia Wageman
Manufacturer: Watermark Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook (Maui Revealed)

ASIN: 0974267252

Book Description

For generations, Hawai`i's flowers and plants have inspired authors, poets, song-smiths and travel writers - from the creation chants of the Kumulipo to the lyrics of the hapa haole classics, from travelogues of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson to the verse of today's poets. In this stunning photographic work, award-winning author-designers Jim and Virginia Wageman match excerpts from literature with 50 Island flowers and plants - weaving a unique literary lei of beauty, inspiration and cultural diversity.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful journey to Hawaii.......2007-03-21

This award-winning book is a treasure for anyone who loves Hawaii, flowers, or great writing. The pictures are stunning - you can almost feel the texture of the plants and smell the flowers. The literary quotes show how Hawaii and its flora have inspired the great writers who have lived and visited here, and give us a new way to see the plants through their eyes. There is just the right amount of technical information about the plants. Most of all, this book transports you to Hawaii. The book received a Ka Po'okela Palapala Award from the Hawaii Book Publishers Association for design.

Average customer rating:

Beautiful Disaster

Aloha o Kalapana
Frankie Stapleton
Manufacturer: Bishop Museum Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0930897692

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful Disaster.......2005-08-26

A very delightful overview of nature's destruction of a portion of Kalapana on the Island of Hawaii. The photography captures the essense of the destructive force loosed by the erupting volcano as well as the beauty of the flowing lava.

The "read" matches the photography making the book well worth the asking price.

Average customer rating:

Photographing Nature in Hawaii
Robert Frutos , and Jenny Thompson
Manufacturer: Island Heritage Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Nature & Wildlife | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0931548276

Book Description

How can you take more stunning nature photographs? By learning to "see" creatively, transforming the world around you into captured moments of magic and awe.

Book Description

David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton have established a reputation as the foremost chroniclers of the endangered natural world, combining rigorous methodology with aesthetic genius. Their work has afforded a vivid presence to rare animals and plants, many of which are threatened with extinction.

This groundbreaking portfolio of photographs encompasses the spectacular array of life-forms endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, including species either new to science or previously thought to be extinct.

Working with internationally renowned field biologists, Liittschwager and Middleton have ventured into remote native habitats and uncovered intact ecosystems where plants and animals still live in healthy relationship to one another. Their inaccessibility has helped protect these habitats from damage, even if it means that few people will ever have the opportunity to experience their richness and value directly.

Remains of a Rainbow combines Liittschwager's and Middleton's work with a powerful text (including a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer W.S. Merwin) to tell a story of rare and wondrous creatures and habitats and the people devoted to their preservation.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful Book.......2007-01-19

We first saw the hard-back version of this book in the museum on the island of Kauai. We thought it was a wonderful hardback book, but the museum tols us that it could cost $150.00 and was no longer available in any form. Luckily we found it on Amazon in soft cover (which is more than adequate) and for much less money. Truely a beautiful and informative book!

Pretty pictures but don't trust the text.......2006-11-08

The pictures of rare Hawaiian plants and animals in "Remains of a Rainbow" are pretty.
Pretty uninformative. And the text is largely nonsense.
The tipoff is "rich volcanic soil." When you see that in a book about Hawaiian natural history, you know right away that the author made no effort to learn his subject.
Just a few paragraphs away, we run into a rhapsody about the ancient Hawaiians' respect for the "unity and balance of the natural world." Large, slow, tasty birds excepted, of course.
The text by photographers David Liitschwager and Susan Middleton (assisted by Maui poet W.S. Merwin in an ill-informed introduction) is the verbal equivalent of kudzu -- an exotic, boring growth that smothers the interesting natural stuff underneath. Green goo.
It is understandable why the sponsors of "Remains" -- Environmental Defense and the National Geographic Society -- pander this way. It is not so easy to sell Hawaii's endangered plants and animals on their merits. After all, you and I are not likely ever to encounter most of them.
Which raises a question: If none of us is going to meet them except in the pages of a book, why bother to preserve them in nature? A small herb that was never known to exist until three or four years ago, and which was down to maybe five or 10 individuals then, is not going to alter the islands' ecosystem if it disappears.
One answer to that question is the last word in this book, taken from the writings of the late Maui biologist Wayne Gagne: "We are in pursuit of environmental quality, an ethical stance where our native biota is concerned, and for accepting each natural ecosystem on the planet for what it is . . . each a unique result of multifaceted ecological processes, past, present and continuing."
Fine words, but Liittschwager, Middleton and their sponsors obviously do not believe they can sell them. So instead of marketing Hawaii for what it is -- a unique place -- they peddle the ecological situation here, which is grim enough in fact, as part of a crisis "of declining biodiversity worldwide."
This is the "sixth great extinction" argument, one of those resilient popular ideas for which there is little evidence. People holding such views can find themselves in paradoxical situations.
Middleton, who blows the tin horn of mass extinctions louder than Liittschwager, writes about how after 15 years of working with endangered species, none she had encountered had yet gone extinct. Until Clermontia peleana.
But it turns out that while Clermontia peleana, a Big Island plant, probably is extinct in the wild, it is not yet quite extinct from the Earth.
Middleton does not seem to find any contradiction in simultaneous belief that the world is in the midst of the biggest extinction crisis in 65 million years and the fact that even a specialist in endangered species has yet to encounter one that passed on.
Considering that outsiders Liittschwager and Middleton had the cooperation of dozens of Hawaii's best biologists, they could easily have done better.
For one thing -- and this is another tipoff that the writers have not done their homework -- if they had listened to local experts, they would not have made such a big deal of Hawaii's biological diversity. To call islands with no amphibians, no reptiles, no pines and no ants diverse is perverse.
Instead of revealing and reveling in Hawaii's strange status -- its untypical ecological situation makes it the greatest natural laboratory of evolution -- Liitschwager and Middleton went for the picturesque and shallow.
Their pictures are gorgeous but don't tell much. They mostly were shot against solid backgrounds and display only a part of the organism. There is little hint of how each species functions within its community.
The misleading text of Liittschwager and Middleton is somewhat corrected by thumbnail descriptions of the 142 species illustrated, which were written by local authorities and are reliable.
"Remains of a Rainbow" represents the work of years, with the combined support for publishing from Environmental Defense, the National Tropical Botanical Garden and The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii; along with the on-the-ground help of NTBG, Maui Land & Pineapple Co. and other public-spirited groups.
In an afterword, David Wilcove, senior ecologist of Environmental Defense, writes that the survival of species in desperate straits will rely on "above all, public education."
"Remains of a Rainbow" is so far from contributing to public education that readers will end up knowing less about Hawaii after reading the book than they did before.

Don't get me wrong............2006-01-18

Now don't get me wrong. This is a wonderful book with beautiful photographs of Native Plants and Animals of Hawaii. The only thing wrong with the Softcover version is that the cover creases so easily. So if you want this book for your own personal library the Hardcover version is preferred. But if it is used as it is meant to be, as a coffee table book, than this is the book to have.

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW.......2003-02-25

WOWS on every page. I gave this book to my Mother and Aunt for X-Mass. I wanted one for myself but ran out of cash (dag nab it) This is one of the most AMAZING nature books ever. If you need some brownie points give this as a gift, it will keep you out of the Dog House for YEARS.

Spectacular Photographs.......2002-04-28

This book contains some of the most spectacular photographs you've seen. Close-ups even a pro would seldom come close to. It's unlikely you'll see many of these in your travels, but it feels like your walking through a Hawaiian tropical jungle as you page through the book. Many of the pages would look great framed for your walls. This is the perfect coffee table book, all of my friends have picked it up and marveled over the interesting plants and flowers, even the non-gardeners.

Rainbow Reefs: Images From Hawaii's Underwater Paradise

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Rainbow Reefs: Images From Hawaii's Underwater Paradise
John Hoover
Manufacturer: Mutual Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1566477611

Product Description

Through the talented lens of underwater photographer John P. Hoover this book presents highlights of Hawaiis underwater realm. See schools of golden yellow Tangs flowing over the reef, flowerlike corals, Sea Slugs of unbelievable color, Cleaner Shrimps grooming eels, strange nocturnal Lobsters and Frogfishes mimicking sponges. Meet Hawaiis state fish the Humuhumu-nukunuku-apuaa and watch tiny hermit crabs fight over a shell. Marvel at the incredible camouflage of the Scorpionfish and chuckle at the comical faces of Pufferfish and Flounders. Whether snorkler, diver, or arm-chair traveler, you will enjoy the undersea paradise that is Hawaii.

Pana O`Ahu: Sacred Stones, Sacred Land (Latitude 20 Book)

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Pana O`Ahu: Sacred Stones, Sacred Land (Latitude 20 Book)

Manufacturer: University of Hawaii Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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In Deeper Waters: Photographic Studies of Hawaiian Deep-Sea Habitats and Life-Forms

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In Deeper Waters: Photographic Studies of Hawaiian Deep-Sea Habitats and Life-Forms
E. H. Chave , and Alexander Malahoff
Manufacturer: University of Hawaii Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0824820037

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