Your Book Review: A Residence Of 21 Years In The Sandwich Islands

[This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]1. A New Cause AreaIn October 1819, my grandmother’s grandfather’s grandfather, Hiram Bingham I, stood with his wife, Sybil, and his friends outside Park Street Church in Boston and bade farewell to family before venturing into the unknown. They would spend the next five months on a cramped ship sailing to a foreign land of strange people, full of “destitution, degradation, and barbarism.” They did not know if they would ever return to America.Unlike others who voyaged out to sea, they were not whalers, nor merchants trying to make a quick profit. Instead, their goal was far more ambitious: to uplift an entire nation out of heathenry to civilization. Or as Hiram wrote, to “most effectually…