Prof. John Demos, Yale University

“Sharks and Kings provokes in the reader a measure of sheer astonishment. There is something special in what Noah Basil has done here. With his prodigious research he took me to Hawaii, to the ships of Captain Cook, to New England and elsewhere. I was entranced. For years I taught a graduate seminar at Yale called Writing History. This would have gone straight on the syllabus.”

Prof. Neil Kenny, University of Oxford

“Some writers are storytellers, others are researchers. Noah Basil is both. His Sharks and Kings pictures an unfamiliar world at the moment when its slide to near-decimation begins. The distant voices of witnesses, Native Hawaiian as well as European, are amplified through this compelling drama, grounded not in stereotypes but in the grit of history.”

Prof. Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University

“Noah Basil’s tale of the first arrival of Westerners in Hawai‘i strikes a perfect balance between history and literature. The sweeping saga grips the reader at every turn while illuminating, based on detailed sourcing, ancient Hawaiian skills and beliefs that have all but vanished today. I endorse this book enthusiastically.”

Prof. Roland Greene, Stanford University

“Noah Basil’s  Sharks and Kings is a rare kind of narrative history: founded on an impeccable attention to both primary and secondary sources, it reads like fiction. You'll turn the pages as avidly as I did. I recommend the book highly.”

Prof. Jason Furman, Harvard University

“Noah Basil’s  Sharks and Kings is an astonishing act of resurrecting people and events from 250 years ago. The riveting tale, grounded in comprehensive research, brings light to a chapter in U.S. and world history that most have not forgotten—they simply never even knew.”