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The Book of Tiki
Tiki is the manifestation of exotic visions of island culture borrowed from tales told by American soldiers stationed in the South Pacific during World War trees loaded with exotic fruits, sleepy lagoons, white-sand beaches, and gorgeous people wearing grass feathers as they danced half-naked during all-night orgies of food and music. Americans seized these visions and incorporated fantasy into mid-century fashion, popular music, eating and drinking, and even architecture were influenced by the Tiki trend.
This enlightening and hilarious guide casts the reader as an ""urban archaeologist,"" exploring the lost remnants of the Tiki culture across the United States and discovering relics from this forgotten civilization in thrift stores, yard sales, and used book and record emporia. A combination of nostalgia and fascinating pop cultural study, this volume is a long overdue investigation into the cult of the Tiki. Almost makes you want to dig up those old grass skirts and throw luau
This enlightening and hilarious guide casts the reader as an ""urban archaeologist,"" exploring the lost remnants of the Tiki culture across the United States and discovering relics from this forgotten civilization in thrift stores, yard sales, and used book and record emporia. A combination of nostalgia and fascinating pop cultural study, this volume is a long overdue investigation into the cult of the Tiki. Almost makes you want to dig up those old grass skirts and throw luau
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2000
3 people are currently reading
305 people want to read
About the author
Taschen
516 books361 followers'Taschen is an art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. It began as Taschen Comics publishing Benedikt's extensive comic collection. Taschen has been a noteworthy force in making lesser-seen art available to mainstream bookstores, including some fetishistic imagery, queer art, historical erotica, pornography and adult magazines (including multiple books with Playboy magazine). Taschen has helped bring this art into broader public view, by publishing these potentially controversial volumes alongside its more mainstream books of comics reprints, art photography, painting, design, fashion, advertising history, film, and architecture.' - Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
June 22, 2018
An awesome and well researched pictorial history of all things TIKI - from architecture, to mugs, to cocktails, and, yes, even torches.
August 8, 2020
Before this whole pandemic, the tiki revival was in full swing. Lots of local tiki bars were open or getting new recognition. New bands were making exotica and tiki lounge music. Tiki conventions and shirts and mugs were all making comebacks.
And most of it can be traced back to this book.
Now, it’s absurd to suggest that a single 20-year-old book started a revolution whose entire ethos is built around leisure, escapism, and fun. But I’ve been reading books about the tiki experience for about three years now, and every single book agrees that The Book of Tiki started it all.
It’s easy to see why. Sven Kirsten assumes you know very little about the world of tiki culture, and treats this book as a primer. Here’s what you need to know - the basics - to step into this weird, enthralling world. You get the capsule history that begins, roughly, with Donn Beach and ends when fern bars take over from tiki bars. (There’s even a chart that shows the motifs of pre-tiki exotic bars and how they became tiki.) There are chapters on tiki architecture, tiki “power places” (major bars and restaurants), and a special chapter on libations by master mixologist Jeff “Beachbum” Berry.
It’s a fantastic place for anyone to start, and if I were alive in the year 2000 and new I was going to develop this fascination, I would have bought it. The problem is that it’s been out of print for over a decade, and it sells on the secondary market for over $100. I bought it for my birthday and I am thrilled, but I’ve already spent so much on rum it’s hard to justify that kind of expense in the interest of study/worship. Don’t worry: I totally justified it.
All the books I’ve been reading have paid homage, one way or another, to The Book of Tiki. It justifies the price, and eradicates all worry that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. It so absolutely does. Now if I could only find Tiki Modern, the sequel, for less than $450 I’d be thrilled.
And most of it can be traced back to this book.
Now, it’s absurd to suggest that a single 20-year-old book started a revolution whose entire ethos is built around leisure, escapism, and fun. But I’ve been reading books about the tiki experience for about three years now, and every single book agrees that The Book of Tiki started it all.
It’s easy to see why. Sven Kirsten assumes you know very little about the world of tiki culture, and treats this book as a primer. Here’s what you need to know - the basics - to step into this weird, enthralling world. You get the capsule history that begins, roughly, with Donn Beach and ends when fern bars take over from tiki bars. (There’s even a chart that shows the motifs of pre-tiki exotic bars and how they became tiki.) There are chapters on tiki architecture, tiki “power places” (major bars and restaurants), and a special chapter on libations by master mixologist Jeff “Beachbum” Berry.
It’s a fantastic place for anyone to start, and if I were alive in the year 2000 and new I was going to develop this fascination, I would have bought it. The problem is that it’s been out of print for over a decade, and it sells on the secondary market for over $100. I bought it for my birthday and I am thrilled, but I’ve already spent so much on rum it’s hard to justify that kind of expense in the interest of study/worship. Don’t worry: I totally justified it.
All the books I’ve been reading have paid homage, one way or another, to The Book of Tiki. It justifies the price, and eradicates all worry that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. It so absolutely does. Now if I could only find Tiki Modern, the sequel, for less than $450 I’d be thrilled.
July 18, 2021
Ok, I really want to rate this higher but I just can't. Horribly referenced photos (missing/inaccurate completely) lightly dancing around the problematic issues, racism and appropriation takes a lot away from this book. While visually inspiring (love that!) and inclusive of the many many contributors to the tiki theme and lifestyle I find this book in our current climate a bit lacking. If you are simply looking for some light reference and visual reference then it does the trick, which is what I wanted. But found the issues to be too distracting to love.
February 9, 2012
I'm not much of a tiki cum lounge fanatic but I love this book, anyway. Every tiki cliche on your laundry list: cocktails, music, clothes, etc. is here for your review, and as mid-century memorabilia goes it's presented with much panache and style. I like the fact that during a short period of time you could live in any boring town in America but still find your own private Fiji in many of these gorgeous lounges. If you want to take a crash course in tikiometry, start here hepcat.
July 13, 2017
A general history of the origins, rise and fall of the Tiki/Polynesian phenomena in mid-20th Century America, with sections on Tiki bars, art, home luaus and Tiki backyards/rec-rooms, motels, theme parks, paraphernalia (and the collecting thereof), drinks, and surfing, all lavishly illustrated. Not an in-depth history of the movement, but a solid coffee table book on the subject.
March 18, 2025
I'll never forget a brief shadow of a memory I have as a child of driving down a stretch of road somewhere in a major Florida resort town (I still can't pinpoint which one) and seeing a massive Tiki restaurant with an A-frame that seemed to jut out and point well over the road and into the sky. The place was massive and looked like a mix of foreboding and mysterious. There were torches and giant Easter Island heads outside. This was all in a brief moment as we drove past.
Ever since that moment I was absolutely overwhelmed with curiosity about what this building looked like inside. What kind of tropical wonders could such a strange looking building hold?
It wasn't until I was in my early twenties and working in a record store that I heard about a musical subgenre called exotica, which was a branch on the greater tree of the Tiki craze or Polynesian pop phenomenon. I had no idea that what I saw that day was some kind of remnant or mirage of an era that during the 50's-early 70's was one of the biggest cultural fads of its day. But most importantly, I finally knew what the name was of this sort of thing I had seen. I obsessively looked through photos and listings of tiki bars and restaurants and found out how brilliant, complex, and beautiful these places could be.
Since then I've had the chance to visit many of these places from California to Florida, and had the chance to see preserved places from the golden era and also new and influential spots that keep the tradition alive. This Sven Kirsten book was and remains a major work within the small cluster of books related to this subject, and for such a popular fad it's remarkable that this is really to this point still the only major history of the subject.
Kirsten seems to be both passionate enough about his subject for the love of it to come through, but also willing to criticize the more unfortunate elements of tiki: mainly its being a supreme example of cultural appropriation and stereotyping, the racism in its depiction of "primitive" peoples and society, and perhaps most of all its objectification of women. I truly did not realize how much the topless and sexually available wahine was practically at the crux of this whole fantasy before the sexual revolution unleashed all the repressed social mores of men living the suburban American life.
It also clicked for me that Polynesian pop as a male fantasy makes an incredible amount of sense considering just how many WWII vets had been stationed on islands where this sort of freedom with the locals could easily occur. Naturally when they returned home they built a society that allowed them to "go back to normal," but this Polynesian tiki temple world could be where they allow themselves to regress to both their most base desires and also their nostalgia.
If you have any interest in America's relationship with tropical myth and imagery, I highly recommend this if you can find a copy.
Ever since that moment I was absolutely overwhelmed with curiosity about what this building looked like inside. What kind of tropical wonders could such a strange looking building hold?
It wasn't until I was in my early twenties and working in a record store that I heard about a musical subgenre called exotica, which was a branch on the greater tree of the Tiki craze or Polynesian pop phenomenon. I had no idea that what I saw that day was some kind of remnant or mirage of an era that during the 50's-early 70's was one of the biggest cultural fads of its day. But most importantly, I finally knew what the name was of this sort of thing I had seen. I obsessively looked through photos and listings of tiki bars and restaurants and found out how brilliant, complex, and beautiful these places could be.
Since then I've had the chance to visit many of these places from California to Florida, and had the chance to see preserved places from the golden era and also new and influential spots that keep the tradition alive. This Sven Kirsten book was and remains a major work within the small cluster of books related to this subject, and for such a popular fad it's remarkable that this is really to this point still the only major history of the subject.
Kirsten seems to be both passionate enough about his subject for the love of it to come through, but also willing to criticize the more unfortunate elements of tiki: mainly its being a supreme example of cultural appropriation and stereotyping, the racism in its depiction of "primitive" peoples and society, and perhaps most of all its objectification of women. I truly did not realize how much the topless and sexually available wahine was practically at the crux of this whole fantasy before the sexual revolution unleashed all the repressed social mores of men living the suburban American life.
It also clicked for me that Polynesian pop as a male fantasy makes an incredible amount of sense considering just how many WWII vets had been stationed on islands where this sort of freedom with the locals could easily occur. Naturally when they returned home they built a society that allowed them to "go back to normal," but this Polynesian tiki temple world could be where they allow themselves to regress to both their most base desires and also their nostalgia.
If you have any interest in America's relationship with tropical myth and imagery, I highly recommend this if you can find a copy.
July 23, 2018
An excellent primer on Polynesian Pop, simultaneously one of America's most American trends and one of the 20th Century's most 20th Century trends. Lavishly illustrated and exceptionally well-researched, my quibbles are two: The first (and this is a rare one) is that the book could have been slightly longer. Each chapter is effectively a short monograph on a subject, and I think an extra 5-20 pages for each would have been useful. The second is the tone of the book--it's written at an ironic remove, as if we are explorers venturing into ancient lands. Like, fine. It's a nice kitschy touch. But it stales quickly.
Anyhow, worth a read from the library.
Anyhow, worth a read from the library.
September 25, 2020
This book is a rare treat to the urban archeologist wanting a primer on Pop-Polynesian Culture. And in the odd and quirky spirit of the book, there are German and French translations in the back, yet the printing was done in Italy.
August 13, 2017
Interesting little history.
December 8, 2018
This is a must have for any Tiki collection
December 8, 2024
"Ah, good taste--what a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness." --PABLO PICASSO All that Urban Archeologist stuff seemed cute at first, but grew rather cloying after a time; mainly though I just gawked at the pitchers!
May 17, 2022
A profoundly odd little book I picked up in Flagler city library. It appears to be written by a Northern European about tiki culture and style in the US. It is filled with images but almost no captioning info The publishing information includes The Old Navy (yes, as in the clothing store) so I’m so puzzled.
However the images are fabulous and the narrative about things from iconic tiki influencers Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic to the post WW II US culture’s impact on nurturing tiki (as well as the hippie counter culture rejection) was good but the images are the main draw.
However the images are fabulous and the narrative about things from iconic tiki influencers Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic to the post WW II US culture’s impact on nurturing tiki (as well as the hippie counter culture rejection) was good but the images are the main draw.
August 3, 2014
I turned my attention to Tiki aesthetics and decor thanks to two separate experiences. The first was a brief, flirting interest with Googie architecture, and the second was a trip to Disneyland. What these two have in common is an overlap over the American craze for Tiki. Kirsten wrote an article that I scooped up somewhere on the internet, and it immediately became obvious that he had put considerable time and research behind what he wrote. I wanted to get more, and so ordered The Book of Tiki from the library. This is not a long, exhaustive history or academic treatise, but it is a good, if brief, outline of the major players, trends and names in American Tiki-dom. This book is primarily aimed at showing the casual reader what the Tiki aesthetic looked like, and how deeply entrenched it was in everything from cocktail spears to apartment architecture. Kirsten gets cute sometimes, as if writing from the perspective of an "urban archaeologist", unearthing finds from garage sales and such, but the narrative is clear: Tiki came from traceable origins, and later, declined like a lost and culturally insensitive civilization. Kirsten's other books might dig deeper into the details of the history, but this is a great start for anyone interested in this tiny slice of largely invented Americana.
October 9, 2007
I know I haven't read this book yet, but I've flipped through every page of it and it's a tiki lover's heaven! Even if the text turns out to be crap (which it doesn't appear to be from the little I skimmed) it wouldn't matter because the pictures are enough to make you weep. It depicts so many tiki themed businesses, that it gives the impression that when you next head out, all this will be waiting for you, but sadly, much of it is now defunct. We can be grateful for th great tiki revival since this books publication in 2000! Yay! Incidentally, that's when I bought it. *blush*
September 21, 2007
Honestly I had higher hopes for this book. It is more of a miss-match collection of yard-sale finds loosely based around South Pacific exoticism, Polynesian-pop, and the tiki-bar phenomenon. I suppose I was hoping for a museum catalog written by a scene-ster, but Sven (a scenester in his own right apparently) took a large first step in the right direction with this book.
July 29, 2007
Great reference for Tiki Americana!
August 30, 2007
Tiki good. Tiki very good.
August 30, 2007
Excellent book about the history of Polynesian Pop and its current resurgence.
January 21, 2008
I only wish that it had more footnotes/citations. Wonderful for anyone interested in American culture, and or the interaction of primitivism and modernism, or just booze.
Read
January 31, 2016Time well spent for fans of Polynesian decor.
January 6, 2015
A great introduction to all that is tiki and its subculture. I enjoyed reading about its colorful history,and sad to learn about how it died. Good to know tiki is making a small come back.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews