Sean Brawley is professor and head of the Department of Modern History, Politics, and International Relations at Macquarie University. Chris Dixon is associate professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland.

• Chapter 1: Beginnings: Defoe, Dampier, and DiscoveryChapter 2: America’s South SeasChapter 3: Herman Melville’s Pacific ImaginingsChapter 4: San Francisco, Art, and Robert Louis StevensonChapter 5: Finding New GuineaChapter 6: The Colonial Endeavor and Australia’s South SeasChapter 7: The Fair, the Stage, and the SongChapter 8: The Great War and the Lost GenerationChapter 9: A South Seas Education: Platform Speakers, National Geographic, and Margaret MeadChapter 10: South Seas TourismChapter 11: Hollywood Encounters the South SeasChapter 12: Cinematic Escapes: The South Seas Adventure FilmChapter 13: HMAV Bounty and the Great DepressionChapter 14: Pardon My Sarong: The Arrival of Dorothy Lamour

The literature on representation of Pacific Island societies, their cultures, and the history of Western contacts with them is extensive. This scholarship has been produced largely by historians, anthropologists, and scholars of literature and media studies in Western countries and, more recently, by islanders themselves. Brawley (modern history, politics, and international relations, Macquarie Univ., Australia) and Dixon (historical and philosophical inquiry, Univ. of Queensland, Australia) now add to that literature. The volume is very good indeed, offering excellent scholarship and taking up a well-chosen range of work. In addition to Defoe and Lamour, the authors consider Robert Louis Stevenson, Margaret Mead, Herman Melville, the Bounty, and a few less-well-covered topics. This reader always welcomes refreshing volumes—especially those of the quality of this one—that retell, and add to, stories of how English-speaking societies have encountered the Pacific Islands and how these stories have been received and shaped over time. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.