Christina Thompson is the editor of Harvard Review and the author of Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story, which was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays and criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including Vogue, the American Scholar, the Journal of Pacific History, and three editions of Best Australian Essays. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Writer's Grant from the Australia Council, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. A dual citizen of the US and Australia, she lives outside of Boston with her family.
“I loved this book. I found Sea People the most intelligent,
empathic, engaging, wide-ranging, informative, and authoritative
treatment of Polynesian mysteries that I have ever read. Christina
Thompson’s gorgeous writing arises from a deep well of research and
succeeds in conjuring a lost world.”
*Dava Sobel, bestselling author of Longitude
and The Glass Universe *
“Who hasn’t stayed up late reading South Sea tales? Christina
Thompson’s Sea People is a South Sea tale to top them all—the
exploration and settlement of the vast Pacific Ocean by stone-age
Polynesians—and every word is true. It’s a compelling story,
beautifully told, the best exploration narrative I’ve read in
years.”
*Richard Rhodes, author of Energy: A Human History
and the Pulitzer Prize winning The Making of the Atomic
Bomb*
“To those of the western hemisphere, the Pacific represents a vast
unknown, almost beyond our imagining; for its Polynesian island
peoples, this fluid, shifting place is home. Christina Thompson’s
wonderfully researched and beautifully written narrative brings
these two stories together, gloriously and excitingly. Filled with
teeming grace and terrible power, her book is a vibrant and
revealing new account of the watery part of our world.”
*Philip Hoare, author of
RisingTideFallingStar*
“I have rarely read so exciting and companionable a narrative as
Christina Thompson’s Sea People. In her capable hands this saga of
Polynesia’s scattered islands becomes a comprehensive and dramatic
history of our planet and the ways its peoples, creatures,
vegetation, land forms, and waters interacted over the centuries
and eons since the world began.”
*Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life andElizabeth
Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast*
“The ten-million square miles known as Polynesia was the last area
to be settled by humans and is still the least understood chapter
in history. With a flair for making the past live again, Christina
Thompson give us a comprehensive story of Polynesia and of those
who have studied it. Sea People tells the story of a unique
geographic, cultural, and intellectual voyage across water and
through time. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand
Polynesia, the Pacific, or the spread of humanity around the
globe.”
*Jack Weatherford, bestselling author of Genghis Khan
and the Making of the Modern World*
“Sea People teems with compelling insights as it explores the
age-old mysteries of Polynesian origins. We don’t just visit the
turreted cliffs of the Marquesas with Mendaña, the cloud-wrapped
peaks of Hawaii with Cook, or the treacherous reefs of Raroia with
Heyerdahl. We envision the whole panorama of European exploration
and colonization against the even greater grandeur of Polynesian
inventiveness, dignity, and self-determination. Thanks to
Thompson’s vision, we encounter an authentic global mystery that
proves as vast and luminous as the Pacific itself.”
*Paul Fisher, author of House of Wits: An Intimate
Portrait of the James Family *
“Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, Thompson’s account
shows how the science of human history, despite occasional wrong
turns and dead ends, slowly but steadily advances. A must read for
anyone fascinated by the Polynesians or interested in the history
of science.”
*Patrick V. Kirch, author of On the Road of the
Winds *
“A luminous, beautifully rendered account of Polynesian navigation
and exploration, and the lives and knowledge that built and
populated an astonishing Oceanian civilization. Thompson captures
the remarkable deep history of a world shaped between land and
sea.”
*Matt K. Matsuda, author of Pacific
Worlds*
“Artfully written… [Thompson] writes with infectious awe and
appreciation about Polynesian culture and with sharp intelligence
about the blind spots of those investigating it at different times.
This fascinating work could prove to be the standard on the subject
for some time to come.”
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
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