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Summary: This is the start of things to come
Review: This is an excellent picture book filled with great stories about the good old days. It will bring back memories of a tiki age gone. Why dont we have these kinds of places anymore? Maybe that will change soon but in the mean time this is a great book for all who love this period in our American History or for the island dreamer.
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Summary: Tiki Heaven
Review: This is such an awesome book! It has excellent photos and great information about the Tiki past and present. If anyone is interested in great American pop culture, this is the book.
Rating:
Summary: Tiki Heaven
Review: This is such an awesome book! It has excellent photos and great information about the Tiki past and present. If anyone is interested in great American pop culture, this is the book.
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Summary: Treasure Trove of Tiki Culture
Review: This is the best book on the post-war Tiki culture, although there really isn't much competition. The book's strength (and it's considerable) is its glut of color photos, which chronicle everything from restaurant and resort architecture to barware, film, and graphic design. The text (on the history - mostly the 1940s through the early 1960s - of Tiki culture and notable Tiki people and places, such as Trader Vic's) is good, although scattered about the book in a busy layout, and printed side-by-side in English, French, and German. I might have wished for a bit more text and a cleaner layout, but as the book quotes Picasso, "Good taste marks the death of creativity".
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Summary: Tiki Madness!
Review: This is THE book on the Tiki Americana craze that swept the US shortly after World War II. Sven Kirsten authoratively looks at Tiki- and South Seas-inspired cuisine, drinks, architecture, music, clothing and more. The book is PROFUSELY illustrated: you'll never tire of flipping through the book. I've got several tiki-themed books in my collection, and this one beats them all! Affordably priced, too.
Rating:
Summary: Tiki Madness!
Review: This is THE book on the Tiki Americana craze that swept the US shortly after World War II. Sven Kirsten authoratively looks at Tiki- and South Seas-inspired cuisine, drinks, architecture, music, clothing and more. The book is PROFUSELY illustrated: you'll never tire of flipping through the book. I've got several tiki-themed books in my collection, and this one beats them all! Affordably priced, too.
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Summary: A much needed effort
Review: Tiki worshipers -- we are not alone! Our friends at LuxuriaMusic.com live and breath Tiki, and the Millionaire has kindly written a thoughtful review on "The Book of Tiki." A notable excerpt from this is:"Possibly the most difficult aspect of reviewing this comprehensive study of Polynesian pop is that it stands alone, unassailable. It's difficult to apply any critical distance to a work like this, and it's not that nothing else approaches its thoroughness or insight: the fact is that there is simply nothing else of the sort available. Whatsoever. Anywhere. Kirsten has literally "written the book" on a phase of pop culture that once encompassed architecture,interior design, clothing, music, food, entertainment and much more, yet passed from a ubiquitous vogue to decay and disregard without ever having enjoyed critical respect or even any substantial recognition.
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Summary: Sven Kirsten defines an era!
Review: Truly a wonder of nature this Book of Tiki. Chances are, you might so your parents or grandparents in the pictures, from the days before you considered them old.
The text of the book goes briefly through the various sources of Polynesian pop-culture, and where it branched off. From Michener's South Pacific, to the Lanai apartments in Anytown, USA.
The pictures, brought through the archives of time in the form of various postcards and of the now empty lots that once were Tiki bowling alleys and apartments, show us a fascinating time of tehnicolor wonder and primitive naivete. This was before PC was PC.
All around, a fantastic read, whether you're a full on tiki freak, or you simply wonder why grandpa wore a Hawaiian shirt to your wedding.
Rating:
Summary: it's tiki-tastic!
Review: What a fabulous book! The definitive book on tiki culture! I can't imagine that anyelse could ever surpass the excellent work done by Sven Kirsten. This book is truly a joy. I'll often rush through a new book but I took my time with this beauty. Entertaining, absorbing and stylish, it's just as much fun to merely look at as it is to read it. Each page is an adventure. I was impressed by the scope of the book - it deals with not just restaurants but with motels, apartment buildings, home entertaining, etc. Sven Kirsten also profiles the major innovators and originators of tiki culture. The best part is that the book is presented (tongue in cheek) as a guide to the urban archaeologist, interested in uncovering the remmnants and traces of the now-extinct tiki culture. A must-have book!
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