Compelling ... Pitts has gone deeper than any other writer in cutting through the miasma of misperceptions that shrouds the island, even if his work sometimes bogs down in numbing detail, and he leaves important questions unanswered ... Ventures deep into the weeds ... A bit too much throat clearing ... But Pitts’s wonder comes through on nearly every page.
Crisp, confident, and convincing ... The story Pitts tells—drawing on new archeological findings, a fresh reading of eighteenth-century visitors’ accounts, and a reconsideration of Katherine Routledge’s neglected work—is quite different. It will no doubt be contested ... Pitts’s account reflects a broader shift in the consensus, one that many readers will find persuasive, as this one did.
An ambitious new account ... It was not self-destruction, Pitts argues, but contact with Westerners that caused statue-making to peter out on Rapa Nui ... If Pitts is also guilty of projecting his own preoccupations onto Rapa Nui and its people, he’s not the first and probably won’t be the last, but he makes a better case than most.
