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Unfamiliar Fishes

Length 7 hours 28 minutes

Language English

Narrators Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, John Hodgman, Catherine Keener, Edward Norton, Keanu Reeves, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph & John Slattery

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Summary
About the author
About the narrator

Sarah Vowell thinks of Hawaii as the most American state. She argues that it’s “breathtaking in its beauty, sometimes hideously developed, overwhelmingly religious, impoverished (except for pockets of staggering wealth), crass and spiritual all at once.” In Unfamiliar Fishes, she will explore the exceptional history of Hawaii with her personal reporting and trademark smart-aleckiness to find out the odd and emblematic history of Hawaii, and how it got to be that way. She will explain how Hawaii is Manifest Destiny’s plate lunch.

There will be cannibalism. There will be incest. There will massacres. There will be con men and dreamers. There will be racism. There will be Theodore Roosevelt. There will be history and Obama and America and opportunistic missionaries and warring whalers and kings and queens. And there will even be lepers. And therefore it will be a great and entertaining story of American history, told in Vowell’s inimitable voice and in her unconventional style.

Unfamiliar Fishes is a vacation into a colorful and riveting period in history with America’s favorite historical travel companion, Sarah Vowell.

History Nonfiction

Sarah Vowell is a contributing editor for public radio's This American Life and has written for Time, Esquire, GQ, Spin, Salon, McSweeneys, The Village Voice, and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of Radio On, Take the Cannoli, and The Partly Cloudy Patriot. She lives in New York City.

John Slattery has starred on Broadway in Rabbit Hole, Betrayal, and Laughter on the 23rd Floor. Off-Broadway credits include Three Days of Rain (L.A. Critics Award, Drama Desk nom.), and The Lisbon Traviata. On television he has been seen in Ed, K Street, Sex & the City, and Will & Grace. Films include Flags of Our Fathers, Mona Lisa Smile, The Station Agent,Traffic, and Sleepers.