This book was a slow, painful read, delving into monotonous minutia--there's even a full chapter on a congressional filibuster--but there was also genuinely useful information. Therefore, I read on. This book--like its predecessor--is valuable but must be regarded within the context of the time it was written, when Hawaii became a state in the 1050s. The introduction explains this rather bluntly: that Russ approached his research as a blatant nationalist and didn't really consider the opinions of native Hawaiians, whose thoughts were largely undocumented. The choice of words dates the work, too--"Oriental" is often used. Russ asserts that Hawaii became an American territory when it did because of the Spanish-American war and the need for a reliable coaling station in the Pacific. He discusses the racial issues of the time; many in Congress resisted admitting Hawaii because of its dark-skinned, pagan population and its high numbers of Japanese and Chinese laborers. Japan had imperialist interests in Hawaii in the 1890s; Russ goes as far as calling Hawaii a "Japanese colony," though that extreme viewpoint could be argued.

Other areas (that are tediously explored) involve the back and forth manipulation to discourage Royalists and the major effort to run a trans-Pacific cable to Hawaii.

This set of books is not one that I would recommend unless you are really in need of nitty-gritty details about the politics of Hawaii at the start of the 20th century. While thoroughly cited, it is undoubtedly biased toward the American viewpoint, though at the end the author skips ahead in a major way to praise the diversity of Hawaii and how people have come together. ( )