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Daniel Lewis
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Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai'i Kindle Edition

by Daniel Lewis (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
“A book devoted to the beauty of [Hawaiian] birds . . . is a welcome event. [It] will be both an elegy and an important record of what has been lost to us all.” —W. S. Merwin, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, The Shadow of Sirius

A lively, rich natural history of Hawaiian birds that challenges existing ideas about what constitutes biocultural nativeness and belonging

This natural history takes readers on a thousand-year journey as it explores the Hawaiian Islands’ beautiful birds and a variety of topics including extinction, evolution, survival, conservationists and their work, and, most significantly, the concept of belonging. Author Daniel Lewis, an award-winning historian and globe-traveling amateur birder, builds this lively text around the stories of four species—the Stumbling Moa-Nalo, the Kaua‘I ‘O‘o, the Palila, and the Japanese White-Eye.

Lewis offers innovative ways to think about what it means to be native and proposes new definitions that apply to people as well as to birds. Being native, he argues, is a relative state influenced by factors including the passage of time, charisma, scarcity, utility to others, short-term evolutionary processes, and changing relationships with other organisms. This book also describes how bird conservation started in Hawai‘i, and the naturalists and environmentalists who did extraordinary work.

“With insight, humor, scholarship, and love, Daniel Lewis illustrates how and why the question of who or what “belongs” somewhere is both deceptively complex and increasingly important in today’s Anthropocene world.” —Robert J. Cabin, author of Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i

“Lewis’s fascinating story of Hawaii is, in microcosm, the history of humans on our fragile Earth.” —Bruce M. Beehler, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
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  1. Print length
    321 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  4. Publication date
    April 10, 2018
  5. File size
    17.8 MB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Lewis’s ideas are well thought-out, frequently innovative, and coherently argued.”—Matt Merritt, Bird Watching

“In his new Belonging on an Island, the distinguished writer and historian Daniel Lewis offers a thorough and captivating introduction to the avifauna of his native state and how it has been affected by human settlers—and vice versa—over the millennia.”—Rick Wright, Vermilion Flycatcher

“This is the first book I know that treats the full complexity of the birds of Hawai‘i in such an interesting way. The writing and layout of this well-produced book are clear and easy to follow.”—Lance Tanino, American Birding Association’s “ABA Blog”
 

Winner of the Outstanding Academic Title for 2018 award sponsored by Choice

"The appalling story of the extinction of so many species of Hawaiian birds has been told, but a book devoted to the beauty of the birds themselves is a welcome event. Belonging on an Island will be both an elegy and an important record of what has been lost to us all."—W. S. Merwin

“I doubt there is another book that covers the subject of the extinct and endangered birds of Hawaii so completely. The depth of research is impressive and reflects, in part, Lewis’ affection for the region.”—Joel Greenberg, author of A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction

“With insight, humor, scholarship, and love, Daniel Lewis illustrates how and why the question of who or what “belongs” somewhere is both deceptively complex and increasingly important in today’s Anthropocene world.”—Robert J. Cabin, author of Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i

“Daniel Lewis tells the riveting back story to humankind’s colonization of the Hawaiian Islands. It is a story of extinct flightless birds, remarkable scientific personalities, and clash of cultures. Lewis’s fascinating story of Hawaii is, in microcosm, the history of humans on our fragile Earth.”—Bruce M. Beehler, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

“Belonging on an Island is powerful. It makes important additions to our understanding of Hawaii’s birds and the people who cared most about them. This unique and informative book considers what it means for an organism to belong.”—John Marzluff, University of Washington, author of Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife

About the Author

Daniel Lewis is Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. He is also a lecturer in environmental history at the California Institute of Technology, and an associate research professor at Claremont Graduate University.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07C11P6DM
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (April 10, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 10, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 17.8 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 321 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 15 ratings

About the author

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Daniel Lewis

Daniel Lewis

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I'm a native of Hawaii, now living and working full-time in Southern California as the Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology at the Huntington Library. I've had an engrossing career as a curator, archivist, teacher, and writer.

I have a Ph.D. in History from the University of California (Riverside), and have had post-doctoral appointments at Oxford University and the Smithsonian. I'm on the faculty at Caltech, where I'm a lecturer in Environmental History. My new book, in progress and under contract with Avid Reader Press (a Simon & Schuster imprint), is about twelve species of trees from around the world.

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4.5 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Bob Collins
    5.0 out of 5 stars What a Privilege to Read!
    Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    Thank you, Daniel, for authoring this book. It felt like I was given a gift, and it certainly was a privilege to read, twice; something I only do with Sherlock Holmes stories, movies, and television episodes.
    I am hopeful that in my lifetime, I will be able to see humans fledge as a spacefaring people, especially to Mars, the second stop on our island planet hopping journey. My sincerest hope for the future Captain James Cooks who will head these expeditions is that they take your book along, not as reading material to pass the time, but as a guide on how not to do things as we leave our footprints behind on this journey into space. In fact, NASA should make it required reading for anyone travelling in a capsule.
    As your book proves once again, commons sense is very uncommon. Hopefully, we will take common sense along on our spacefaring journeys, too. Your book and common sense are the only way to go.
    Thank you again for writing this.
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  • DAVID J BOTTJER
    5.0 out of 5 stars Islands serve as some of the most salient laboratories for ...
    Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Islands serve as some of the most salient laboratories for those trying to understand and manage the human impact on the natural world. This new book by Dan Lewis expertly mixes history and science to try and make sense of the extinction of birds on Hawaii from the first arrival of humans to today. It should be required reading for those desiring a fine-scale understanding of how extinction of once abundant animals plays out within a varying human cultural context during this time of accelerated extinctions on Earth.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • G.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Actually fun reading. Sense of humor while informative
    Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    I thought this would be dry and scholarly. it was interesting and a fun read. The writer has a sense of humor and if your a tweeter in Hawaii, it's a must read.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Hawaiian conservation and history lesson
    Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    I learned so much from this book: the history of extinctions, introductions of non native species, and the people involved in the development of Hawaiian conservation. Additionally, it introduced me to new viewpoints and philosophy. It was a very enjoyable education
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Michael L. Williams
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great explanation of evolutionary complexities of isolated but constantly invaded ecosystems
    Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    excellent writing using detailed histories of island bird species and of the scientists who studied them
    2 people found this helpful
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  • D.M.
    5.0 out of 5 stars A book that raises interesting, difficult questions
    Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2018
    This is a really fine work of scholarship, and it reads well too. That's an unusual combination.

    I grew up on the Big Island of Hawai'i, and so I know many of the plants, animals and places Lewis writes about. I should say that it appears he and I went to the same elementary school (though in different years). And, because we've exchanged a few emails, it's clear that neither of us remembers the other. I say this because I don't want my very favorable review to be discounted because we appear to have a shared history.

    The questions Lewis tackles are genuinely vexing ones. One of these runs "when can an invasive species be considered endemic?" In geological time this doesn't need an answer, and in the very short term I'd argue it doesn't need an answer either. But when we start thinking about a few dozen or a few hundred generations of an invader, and when we observe that that invader has evolved in its new home, the question becomes a lot harder to answer.

    In modern Hawai'i you can easily find people saying "Everything here came from somewhere else, so who cares about invasive species?" and others saying "Everything possible should be done to protect indigenous species." It's the difficult middle ground that Lewis explores so effectively.

    Lewis also gives us a look at the scholars who demonstrated that Hawai'i does indeed have a vertebrate fossil record. In this book you'll learn about extinct bird species -- some large, some small, all very interesting -- and how they became extinct, which leads to another vexing question: if it seems easy to talk about modern societies (and nations, and corporations) and how they cause extinctions, it seems less easy to talk about traditional cultures, so often thought of as "one with nature" who, using plants and animals for their own purposes, also cause them to become extinct.

    Lewis does an admirable job of navigating through these reefs and shoals. He never falls into the "see? they were just like us, so it's OK if we continue to do what we're doing" trap, and he never falls into the "ancient Hawaiians lived in a perfect state of nature" trap either. And that's important.

    Lewis' view of Hawaiian ecological/historical/cultural history is a subtle one, and I say this as an ecological anthropologist with considerable training in evolutionary biology and ecology. You will find no stereotypes or gross generalizations in this book.

    Finally, although as a boy and young man I ranged widely over Mauna Kea (one of the two large volcanos on the island) it wasn't until I was more than 60 years old that I learned from the great naturalist Jack Jeffrey that what I had thought was the original state of the mid-lower slopes was completely wrong; rather than being as I'd seen them growing up, they were thickly forested. And I was in my mid-seventies before I learned, from Daniel Lewis, that there had been an entire lowland forest ecosystem that is entirely gone and has been gone for centuries. The lowland forests I was used to seeing are very new. I had no idea at all.

    This book needs a careful reading but -- as I said earlier -- it's well-written and you needn't fear getting bogged down anywhere in it.
    13 people found this helpful
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