Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Republic of Nauru, a single, raised coral island located in the Pacific Ocean, is 26 miles south of the equator and 165 miles east of its nearest neighbor, Ocean Island. With an area of just over 8 square miles, it is roughly circular and has a 22-mile-long coastline and narrow shore. Because of phosphate mining, which began in 1906, the interior four-fifths of the island now consists primarily of coral pinnacles and is unusable and cannot be traversed. The people of Nauru are usually considered Micronesian, though their language differs markedly from all others in Oceania....
