Book excerpt: This highly illustrated timeline, with over 300 photographs, moves readers through the history of Hawaiian Islands, telling a story point by point until a fuller picture emerges. In this volume are collected the dates and names of the men and women who have affected these Islands, some for the better, some for worse. Here is Kamehameha I, unifier of the Islands, alongside Captain Cook, whose voyages to the Islands precipitated years of contact with the West and the near eradication of Hawaiian culture. Here are a multitude of people and events that have shaped and made these Islands into what they have become. This timeline is not a picture of Hawaiian history in its totality; that would require a work of numerous volumes. It does, however, provide the reader with a starting point for further investigation and he or she is encouraged to read the entries gathered in the succeeding pages and seek out further volumes of history to gain a fuller understanding of the events written of here. In this way the book becomes a collection of points guiding the reader onward to new and different horizon.