"Ancient Oahu" contains mythic stories of O'ahu before high rises, freeways and hotels, before sugar plantations and pineapple fields, before churches and Bibles. Selected from the collections of Abraham Fornander (1812-1887) and Thomas G. Thrum (1842-1932), the stories present an ancient history of the island and its first people, telling of the heroes, ancestral spirits, and demigods who performed good works and punished evil-doers. Like ancient petroglyphs, these pre-contact oral traditions are recorded on the land itself - the mountains, rocks, and place names of O'ahu speak them. Stones...