In "Bad Colonists" Nicholas Thomas and Richard Eves provide a window into the fantasies and realities of colonial life by presenting separate sets of letters by two late-nineteenth-century British colonists of the South Pacific: Vernon Lee Walker and Louis Becke. Thomas and Eves frame the letters--addressed mostly to the colonists' mothers--with commentary that explores colonial degeneration in the South Pacific. Using critical anthropology and theories of history-making to view the letter as artifact and autobiography, they examine the process whereby men and women unraveled in the hot,...