CATCH A WAVE is a study of the early statehood politics of Hawaii. The legendary Governor John A. Burns is challenged by the brilliant upstart Thomas P. Gill in the Democratic primary. The influences of labor, business, war veterans, insiders and outsiders are revealed in the process. The campaign was an early exercise in fusing money and television. The renowned Democratic consultant Joseph Napolitan called CATCH A WAVE "required reading for anyone interested in politics and government in Hawaii." The book has sold 20,000 copies. The current printing is its sixth.

In 1893 a small group of white planters and missionary descendants backed by the United States overthrew the Kingdom of Hawai'i and established a government modeled on the Jim Crow South. In Nation Within Tom Coffman tells the complex history of the unsuccessful efforts of deposed Hawaiian queen Lili'uokalani and her subjects to resist annexation, which eventually came in 1898. Coffman describes native Hawaiian political activism, the queen's visits to Washington, D.C., to lobby for independence, and her imprisonment, along with hundreds of others, after their aborted armed...