A Back-Number!

There must be an extraordinary number of university students in need of a basic introductory survey of the South Pacific. Further, the University of Hawaii Press must be anticipating that stocks of the Doubleday Anchor printing of Douglas Oliver’s The Pacific Islands are nearly exhausted. Why else would another printing of this book be offered at a three dollars increase in price when copies of the 1961 printing are still available?

Oliver has not revised his work in over 14 years and in view of the enormous changes which have occurred since 1961 the re-issuing of his book without amendment appears completely unjustified.

It is to be hoped that an inexpen sive textbook, more comprehensive and systematic than Ron Cro combe’s The New South Pacific and more up-to-date than Oliver’s work, will soon be available for those students who may shortly be forced to accept a “classic” because there

is no alternative.

R. Herr.

(Douglas L. Oliver, THE PACIFIC ISLANDS (rev ed; Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1961), $4.95).