A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands, or the Civil, Religious, and Political History of Those Islands: Comprising a Particular View ... and Progress of Christianity and Civilizati

First, the "Editorial Review .. About the Author" is completely inaccurate. The actual author was born Oct. 30, 1789 in Bennington, Vermont and was in the first missionary company sent to Hawaii. The Hiram Bingham who discovered Machu Picchu was the original's grandson.Secondly, while the write-up said "This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text", this is a vast understatement. Once I received the book, I read the Publisher's Note that explained that the "book was created using optical character recognition software. The software is 99 percent accurate if the book is in good condition. However, we do understand that even one percent can be an annoying number of typos! And sometimes all or part of a page maybe missing from our copy of the book. Or the paper may be so discolored from age that it is difficult to read. We apologize and gratefully acknowledge Google's assistance." I wish I had known this upfront. All page separations, chapter separations, engravings, etc. are missing -- there are paragraph separations but it is all one run-on set of text.Luckily I have a Public Library copy that I can use to figure out where the chapter divisions should be. And the free download from RareBooksClub.com makes it somewhat better than useless. Since it was only $24, I will not return it but I wish Amazon had given better warning of what a limited edition I was getting.The book itself (I am writing about the Public Library copy I have printed by Charles E. Tuttle, Company 1981) is excellent. It provides an authoritative first hand account from one of the first Protestant missionaries to arrive in Hawai'i in 1820 until he left in 1840. He was key in establishing the church in the islands, in codifying the Hawaiian language, in educating first the chiefs and then the rest of the population in reading and writing in both Hawaiian and English, and in converting the chiefs and indigenous Hawaiians to Christianity. For those who have read James Michener's book HAWAII (or seen the 1966 movie), the character of Abner Hale was largely based on Reverend Hiram Bingham's life (with a LOT of poetic license).

This book is at its best when the author Mr. Bingham is describing his interactions with the indigenous people of Hawaii, religious awakening, and lives transformed by the gospel of grace. It's not so good when the author gets bogged down in citing letters or describing conflicts, such as rivalries with Catholics. The attention the missionaries gave to education is commendable. It could use a modern, abridged retelling. The "Introduction to the New Edition", written in modern times, points out both Bingham's achievements and shortcomings, but resorts to stereotyping and makes no attempt to understand Bingham's Christian worldview. This Kindle edition lacks part of chapter XXIV, and ALL subsequent chapters, and contains numerous spelling errors probably introduced by OCR scanning.

We have here the first account of Hawaii by a person who lived in Hawaii for twenty years, beginning in 1820, who spoke Hawaiian and converted that language into writing. While burdened with the western religious convictions of the time, Bingham was an astute literate observer of life in the islands during his time there. He was a friend and confident of the most powerful person in the Hawaiian kingdom of that period - the queen regent Kaahumanu. As leader of the Congregational missionaries, Bingham was given the vast lands of Punahou and in turn gave them to the mission to establish Punahou School, currently famous as the high school of President Obama. Bingham and his wife returned to Connecticut after 20 years of service in Hawaii, leaving the property he was given to the education of future generations.

Classic book. Wish it was rewritten in a modern format though