| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Tom Coffman. The Island Edge of America: A Political History of Hawai'i. (A Latitide 20 book.) Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2003. Pp. xv, 419. $42.00, paper $16.95.
Tom Coffman, an independent scholar-journalist, is widely recognized for his excellent publications and films on Hawaiian history and politics. This most recent book explores the island's twentieth-century experience within the context of the broader American record of the era, and it, too, should be well received.	1
Combining standard historical reporting with revealing anecdotes, Coffman sketches the principal developments of the earlier years of the century and then commences one of the best interpretations to date of the period from World War II through the first several decades of statehood, a time when Hawaii evolved from its earlier "sugar coated fortress" role (as several earlier writers described it ) to become a notable factor in American culture and politics. As a unique multicultural society that pioneered numerous social changes, including the election of America's first major leaders of Asian and Pacific extraction, the islands emerged as a symbol of what many—John F. Kennedy among them—believed was the nation's eventual societal destiny. That this view became the dominant perception of Hawaii's place in the national epic is one of Coffman's key points.	. . .

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