Book excerpt: "Sam and Mary Cooke have assembled at Kualii, their Manoa Valley home, a cultural treasure unsurpassed by any other private collection in the islands. This collection of paintings, drawings, and prints of the Hawaiian Islands uniquely reflects the kamaaina appreciation the Cookes have for various locales throughout the islands, including generations-long associations with people and places, and a love of legends and history. In this book, historian and bibliographer David W. Forbes presents a selection of the collection's finest works. Hawaii in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with particular focus on portrayal of the Hawaiian chiefs, is depicted by artists associated with voyages of exploration and art in the interest of science, including John Webber, Jacques Arago, Louis Choris, John Hayter, Alfred T. Agate, Titian Ramsay Peale, and J. G. Keulemans. Everyday life in mid-nineteenth century Hawaii is captured by August Borget, Enoch Wood Perry Jr., Edward Bailey, Paul Emmert, and George H. Burgess. Landscapes and portraits of emerging multi-cultural Hawaii are beautifully rendered by accomplished late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists Charles Furneaux, Joseph D. Strong, Jules, Tavernier, D. Howard Hitchcock, Helen Whitney Kelly, Lionel Walden, Matteo Sandona, and by mid-twentieth century painters Lloyd Sexton and Peter Hurd"-- From book jacket.