A captivating trove of ideas about the mysterious settlers of Samoa.
A debut nonfiction work explores the history of Samoan settlement.
The settling of Polynesia is perhaps the greatest achievement in human migration—and also one of its greatest mysteries. The timeline and manner in which people came to inhabit the scattered islands of the Pacific Ocean remain subjects for debate, even with the advent of modern research. “The story of the Polynesian’s great migration is a mystery that scientists have been trying to unravel for the last two hundred years,” writes Levi. “The Polynesian migration presents a narrative which, to be complete, must include why, where, how, and when it began. It has to answer the question of motivation.” With this book, the author focuses on the settlement of Samoa, particularly the Manu’a Islands—islands that the French explorer Louis-Antoine Bougainville referred to as the “Archipelago of the Navigators.” Levi seeks to document the ways in which the culture of Samoa and Manu’a was shaped by its remote geography and the various places its settlers may have stopped along the way. A Samoan Orator Chief, Levi is tasked with keeping and propagating the history, laws, language, genealogy, customs, and mythology of his people. The volume augments that traditional knowledge with historical accounts from other cultures—both ancient and modern—as well as scientific studies into the archaeology, genetics, and linguistics of Polynesia. The result is what the author refers to as an “aerial survey,” a bird’s-eye view that attempts to present a broad picture by taking all possible knowledge into account. (When discussing tiny islands surrounded by a vast expanse of ocean, it’s really the only view that makes sense.) The story that emerges is one of human movement: migration that did not end 3,000 years ago but rather continues among Samoans to this day.
Levi’s prose is balanced and engaging, as one might expect from a professional orator. He adeptly weaves together various threads of information, as here where he introduces a local tradition into questions about the presence of Lapita pottery across Polynesia: “Samoan legends frequently mention that ‘dark skin people with their bow and arrows and spears are frightful enemies,’ also mentioning different methods of fishing….Just when you think a discovery is going to clear up the puzzle, instead it adds another layer of complexity.” The book is not a purely scholastic one. Indeed, the author argues that theories of history that concentrate too myopically on scientific evidence may miss clues hiding in traditional knowledge. His argument is meandering and at times idiosyncratic, revealing his affinity for the ideas of James George Frazer and Joseph Campbell as well as Levi’s own Christian faith. This, coupled with his oratorical flair, sometimes leads to digressions. (For instance, his conclusion name-checks Beethoven, Croesus, and the Bible.) That said, the volume contains a great deal of insightful writing on Samoan traditions, mythology, and language as well as a number of potential theories about the “Navigators” and their motivations. For those interested in Polynesian history, this work has much to offer. Levi is the perfect teller of this tale, and it is a story worth hearing.
A captivating trove of ideas about the mysterious settlers of Samoa.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-95-407603-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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