The most recommended books about the Pacific Ocean

This book is one of those books I reread every few years for the pleasure of Stevenson’s prose mastery and its richness in accurate detail of South Pacific Island existence.

RLS ranked this novella among his top accomplishments. Written in his final years at his home on the island of Upolu in Samoa, it is a lesson in the art of storytelling. Set on a small South Seas Island, it encapsulates in its tale of one white trader’s experience the essence of the human interface between two disparate cultures. While his In the South Seas journals more deeply explore the intricacies of island life, This book takes you there 150 years ago.

A true story of love, loss, and survival at sea. The author’s book cover pretty much tells the true story. There you see two lovers, their heads bowed, and below their profiles the wreckage of a dismasted sailboat, a solitary female figure searching the now calm but empty horizon—the aftermath of pounding rain, gigantic seas, and 140-knot winds. One critic wrote, "this book is life-affirming, a saga of human survival, a tale of loss and victory, proof of the resilience of the human spirit." I totally agree. Be ready to shed a tear or two and maybe read all night. Hollywood made a movie of this book, so it must be a good read.

For the uninitiated sailor, the definition of terms at the back matter is excellent, and learn what happens to a 44’ sailboat in a hurricane. It ain’t pretty, but it is inspiring.

I wanted to include a board book in my recommendations because finding books that speak to pre-schoolers is a real gift.

Roy Henry Vickers, a well-known First Nations artist, employs warm colours and clear simple shapes to convey his love for animals, the land, and his culture. Words are used sparingly which makes us enjoy their sound. The story reads like in a poem, it's a sensory experience. Every page is a new setting, often with Indigenous imagery worked in.

Raven Squawk, Orca Squeak feels like an invitation to come and visit.

Unsung Eagles is an intimate tour-de-force of air combat in World War II told, literally, from the perspective of the pilots themselves. The pilots who provided their stories for this book were all unassuming men from humble backgrounds. Yet, after Pearl Harbor, they gladly raised their right hands and swore an oath to defeat the Axis Powers. These brave young men flew various combat missions over the European and Pacific theaters. Yet, after the war, they came home to resume their normal lives and said nary a word about their wartime service, until now.

In past and present narratives of the Marquesas, along with other Pacific paradises, writers tend toward sensational or romantic exaggeration. T. Walter Herbert sets the record straight, showing what Melville likely encountered during his sojourn to Nukuhiva. In Herbert’s book, Melville is one of three examples of visitors to the islands, along with ship’s captain David Porter, whose narrative describes his laying violent waste to villages in the interior, and missionary William Alexander. Herbert shows what these visitors misunderstood about people characterized as “savages” and “barbarians”—readings that continue to influence cultural attitudes today. No one writes with quite the controlled fury and keen insight of this author!

The land war in the South Pacific was brutal.

Japanese conduct was unfathomable to the GIs and Marines who confronted them in battle: The enemy would almost never surrender, engaged in suicidal charges, and often feigned death when wounded in an attempt to kill at least one American before expiring. As the Japanese asked no quarter, they also rarely offered it, and those taken prisoner by the Emperor’s soldiers were often murdered and their bodies mutilated. 

Then there was the land itself: jungles and marshes of debilitating heat and humidity from which sprang deadly diseases such as malaria, typhus, and cholera which caused multiples of the numbers of casualties suffered in battle. 

Touched With Fire chronicles this hellish battlefield as the Japanese advance was slowed, halted, and then reversed over the course of 1942-45.

For readers venturing into the history of Siberia for the first time, East of the Sun is an excellent introduction to this Asian side of Russia, stretching 5,000 miles between the Ural Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The book's narrative covers four centuries, from the conquest of Siberia by Russians in the late 16th century through the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 20th century—including early expeditions into the uncharted lands east of the Urals and the Russians' push toward the Pacific Ocean; native people in Siberia; Russian expansion into North America, from Alaska to California; Siberia as a place of prison and exile, but also a land of opportunity for millions of voluntary settlers; the impact of the Trans-Siberian Railroad; and the effects of modernization under the Soviets in the 20th century. If you're an armchair traveler interested in history, or planning a trip to Siberia yourself,… show more.

My next book is by far the least well-known of my authors, and it’s by far the least well-known book. It’s by my friend and colleague, Samuel Alexander, with whom I’ve co-written a couple of books now, including This Civilisation is Finished.

It’s a splendid read. For philosophers, it’s charming, because Sam is continually bringing in implicitly, and most explicitly, the great philosophers. He’s quoting or talking about Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, and the rest. His characters sometimes offer lines of one of them to each other. And, in that sense, it’s very much a novel of ideas in the tradition of utopias and dystopias.

Before M*A*S*H and Catch 22, Michner’s book gave American readers a captivating view of the human side of U.S. soldiers and sailors at war in the South Pacific. This sequential series of interconnected short stories set in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands works like the best TV mini-series. There are not just sailors and marines; there are locals and colonial characters. 

A great read. Don’t just take my word for it: it won a Pulitzer in 1947. And yes, the highly successful musical play South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein is based on stories from this Michener classic. 

A book that falls between Lummis and Steinbeck chronologically is William Francis Butler’s The Wild North Land: Being the Story of a Winter Journey, with Dogs, Across Northern North America, an account of his retracing of the route of the 18th-century Scottish explorer Alexander McKenzie who traversed much of Canada from Lake Chipewyan in Alberta to the Pacific Ocean. Butler had a dog team whose leader was Cerf-Vola, who distinguished himself for his sagacity and strength. Ultimately, Butler retired him from sled duty to dog companion. That relationship did not prevent Butler from giving the dog to an acquaintance when he returned to England, saying that it broke his heart when he had to lay aside his emotions for “the sterner stuff of civilization.”