Cultural critic and public radio giant Sarah Vowell is a contributing editor for National Public Radio's This American Life and the author of The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli, and Assassination Vacation. Known for her witty and irreverent exposés of the glorious conundrums of United States history, Vowell examines the far-reaches of Western intervention in our 50th state in her new book, Unfamiliar Fishes. With an eye not just to power but to (as Vowell claims), "our favorite religion, capitalism, and our second-favorite religion, Christianity," Unfamiliar Fishes teases the hypocrisy from our earliest interactions with Hawaii, featuring dour missionaries, incestuous royalty, sugar barons, and a much-too-merry monarch.