Thread: The Teak Door Library

I read this a long time ago and liked it a lot. My mother recently gave me a secondhand copy whilst she was here and I've just re read it. Brilliant. A succinct and moving history of the white mans selfish destruction of the Indiand and their culture. Not only a good read but one you'll want to keep for reference.


Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by American writer Dee Brown is a history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century, and their displacement and slaughter by the United States federal government. It was first published in 1970 to generally strong reviews, although scholars criticized it on several grounds. Published at a time of increasing American Indian activism, the book was on the bestseller list for more than a year. Translated into 17 languages, it has never gone out of print.

Content
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee expresses the American Indian perspective of the injustices and betrayals of the US government--in its dealings with the Indians, which seemed to be engaged in continued efforts to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of Native American people.
The book begins with the statement that Christopher Columbus had named the Native Americans "Indios" and with the differing dialects and accents of the Europeans to come, the word became known as Indians. Life as known to the indigenous people of the Americas would never be the same from the point of Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492.
Chapter by chapter, the book describes differing tribes of Native Americans and their relations to the US federal government during the years 1860-1890. It begins with the Navajos, the Apaches, and the other tribes of the Southwest US who were displaced as California and the surrounding areas were colonised. Brown chronicles the changing and sometimes conflicting attitudes both of US authorities, such as General Custer, and Indian chiefs, particularly Geronimo, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse, and the Indian chiefs' attempts to save their peoples, by peace, war, or retreat.
The later part of the book focuses primarily on the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes of the North American Plains. They were among the last to be moved onto Indian reservations, under perhaps the most violent circumstances. It culminates with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the deaths of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and the US slaughter of Sioux prisoners at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, an event generally considered to mark the end of the Indian Wars.

Photo-Op: Burmese Days
JANUARY 8, 2011


Felice Beato

In the 1830s, the Suez route—steamship to Alexandria, overland to Port Suez, steamer across the Arabian Sea—halved the travel time from London to India: three months rather than six. (It would halve again with the opening of the canal in 1869.)

For all England's pride in its empire, few Englishman had any sense of it before the 1850s.

With the dawn of photography, intrepid travelers began bringing the imperial world home. Felice Beato (1832-1909) was drawn east by war—in 1855, he and a partner took over Roger Fenton's duties photographing in the Crimea.

Beato then pushed on to India and documented the Indian Mutiny.

These images ensure his place in the pantheon of war photographers, but his sepia-toned panoramas of the Far East are equally gripping.

The portrait above—formal due to the long exposure time—shows a British army medical unit in Burma sometime between 1887 and 1897.

The officers and men pose with their various ambulances (a 'charjamah' on the back of an elephant, a hand-drawn 'dandy' and a bullock cart).

An image likely made for the officers' mess, it is extraordinary in its very ordinariness. Beato spent more than 50 years living in India, Burma, China and Japan, and his photographs are full of such quotidian delights.

His life is well-told in Anne Lacoste's superb study: 'Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road' (Getty, 202 pages, $39.95), and theprints remain as revelatory today as they were to a 19th-century audience.

—The Editors

online.wsj.com

Announcement
Monday, 10 January 2011

New book on Shan for Thais

Many outsiders who know Thai and Shan are linguistic and ethnic cousins think Thais must know a lot about Shans. However, Thais themselves complain that they know less about Shans than the Farangs (Westerners).



It is also not unusual to find many surprised Thais when they first hear Thai Yai, which is the Thai word for Shans meaning “Big Thai” or “Elder Thai”, are not Burmans but instead their own close cousins.

Which has led to grumbles by older generation Thais that the Thai education system is in need of a thorough overhaul that will include a compulsory and comprehensive study about the kingdom’s neighbors in its curriculum.

One of the efforts to fill the awareness gap for Thais is the recently published “Jodmai Jark Rat Charn: Phaendin 34 Jaofa” (Letter from Shan State: The Land of 34 princes) by Paradorn Sakda, a veteran journalist.

The 272 page book, priced at 345 baht ($11.5), caters to Thais who don’t want to spend time reading too much. More than half of the book are devoted to photographs and maps, both old and new.

More than 100 pages of it also are allotted to Kengtung (Chiangtung in Thai), the old Shan principality that is the most familiar to Thais, who had occupied it in 1942-45 during WWII. There are also separate chapters about Sao Noi, the first resistance leader, Gawnzerng, Khun Sa and of course the present leader Yawdserk.

There is also a short account about myself. So for readers who think I’m worth mentioning at all, it won’t be a disappointment.

Mysoong Kha! (Best wishes)

Khuensai Jaiyen

shanland.org

Rare insights into the mind of MM Lee
Elgin Toh
Jan 14, 2011


'Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going' will be launched on Jan 21.
ST PHOTO: STEPHANIE YEOW

A NEW book to be launched next week will offer a rare glimpse into the mind and life of the most influential man in Singapore's history.

Titled Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going, it is based on 16 interviews the Minister Mentor gave to seven journalists from The Straits Times between December 2008 and October 2009.

It will hit the bookstores next Friday, after a launch event at The St Regis Singapore hotel.

The 458-page book, which comes with a DVD of scenes from the interview, is a comprehensive examination of Mr Lee's beliefs. It covers in 11 chapters weighty topics such as Singapore's political system, climate change and international relations, and also lighter ones, like his views on tattoos, fengshui and movies.

One distinctive feature is its extensive use of the question-and-answer format, which the authors hope will engage younger readers and capture unvarnished the robust exchanges between Mr Lee and his interviewers.

'There hasn't been a book like this where his views are subjected to such intense questioning and scrutiny in 32 hours of interviews,' said The Straits Times editor Han Fook Kwang, 57, who led the team of seven writers.

'He gave us unprecedented access and time because he wanted to reach out especially to younger Singaporeans who may be unconvinced whether his views are still relevant in this day and age.'

The other ST writers involved are: deputy editor Zuraidah Ibrahim, 46; deputy review editor Chua Mui Hoong, 42; deputy political editor Lydia Lim, 39; news editor Ignatius Low, 38; and reporters Rachel Lin, 25; and Robin Chan, 27.

The project began in August 2008, when Mr Lee called Mr Han to seek his opinion on draft chapters he had written for a possible third volume to his memoirs, after The Singapore Story (1998) and From Third World To First (2000).

He wanted to remind the young about the harsh realities facing Singapore, as he points out in his foreword to the book:

'My abiding concern for Singapore arises from my belief that the younger generation, especially those below 35, had never seen the harsh economic conditions. They therefore do not know the threats we face from neighbouring countries.' Or as he stressed several times in the interviews, there were hard truths about Singapore that the younger generation needed to understand.

Mr Han consulted his colleagues and reverted to Mr Lee with an alternative proposal. Why not have journalists confront him with the hard questions his critics and young people would ask him? A spirited debate, published in Mr Lee's own words, would make for a better read.

Mr Lee accepted.

The ST team began its research. They also conducted focus group discussions and interviews with more than 200 Singaporeans, from young professionals to academics and economists, to come up with a list of compelling questions for Mr Lee.

The 16 two-hour interviews took place at the Istana - where Mr Lee has his office - either in the Cabinet room or the Sheares room. There were tense moments, and emotional ones when Mr Lee spoke about his personal life. Excerpts of how he spent his last months with his wife were published in The Straits Times after Mrs Lee died in October last year.

The book has drawn praise from those given access to its content ahead of its launch. Said former United States President Bill Clinton: 'It offers rare and compelling access into the mind of a remarkable leader and statesman.'

Singapore Management University law lecturer Eugene Tan said: 'The book distils the knowledge, experience and wisdom of MM Lee in governance, and challenges the reader to think deeper and harder about important issues.'

Assistant human resource manager Julia Chan-Lee, 30, liked the Q&A style: 'The dialogue made me feel a part of the conversation. MM makes a sincere attempt to share the truth of his life with us - this generation for whom he is more icon than man.'

straitstimes.com

HOW TO GET THE BOOK

'Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going' will be available at leading bookstores for $39.90 (including GST) from Jan 21, 2011.

Copies may also be ordered from stpressbooks[at]sph.com.sg or from 6319-8347 (May) and 6319-8341 (Jasmine).

The book can also be purchased online from the Straits Times Press Online Bookstore: ST Press Books from Jan 22.

Thirty copies of a limited edition of the book in hard cover, with MM Lee's signature, are available at $10,000 each, with the proceeds going to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund. Those interested in the signed copies can email Wee Ngiap Hiang at weenh[at]sph.com.sg.

with thanxs to SteveCM , from this post :

https://teakdoor.com/thailand-and-asi...ml#post1665788 (Jan 25, 1942 : Thailand declares war on the United States and England)

Thailand and World War II
Direk Jayanama

Edited by Jane Keyes

ISBN 978-974-9511-33-6
15x23cm, 588pp, B995

In Thailand and World War II, Direk Jayanama provides a unique, first-hand account of Thailand’s diplomatic, military, and economic history between 1938 and 1948. Based largely on diaries that he kept at the time, Professor Direk’s memoirs offer an extraordinary range and depth unsurpassed by the many other official Thai records and memoirs written by government officials of this period.

Diplomat, statesman, academic, and writer, Direk Jayanama helped guide the Thai nation through a turbulent period in its history. He was Deputy Prime Minister when Thailand was forced on 8 December 1941 to accede to Japan’s demand that its troops be permitted safe passage through Thai territory on their way to attack Singapore. In early 1942, under pressure from Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram, Direk reluctantly accepted an appointment as Thai Ambassador to Japan, affording us an inside view of relations between Thailand and Japan at that time. Returning to Thailand in July 1943 for health reasons, Direk went on to play a significant role in the Free Thai movement that sought to make contact with the Allies and overthrow the Japanese during the waning years of the war.

Direk Jayanama’s remarkable skills were employed to their greatest extent in the immediate post-war years. He not only helped bring the state of war with Britain and Australia to a successful conclusion, but he also played a major role in enabling Thailand to obtain admittance to the United Nations in 1948 and resume its full standing in the community of nations.

These detailed and fascinating memoirs include additional chapters by key Free Thai members including Puey Ungphakorn, as well as extensive appendixes containing the text of international treaties and agreements to which Thailand was signatory.

Direk Jayanama, a leading figure in Thai foreign affairs for many years, first joined the foreign service in 1933. Between 1938 and 1941 he became first Deputy and then Foreign Minister of Thailand. In 1942 he was sent as Thai Ambassador to Tokyo, and after his return to Thailand at the end of 1943 served once again as Foreign Minister until August 1944, when he retired from public life in order to devote his energies to the Free Thai resistance movement. During the post-war years Direk served successively as Thailand’s Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Ambassador to England and later Ambassador to West Germany and to Finland. He also became a law lecturer and later Dean of the Faculty of Political Science at Thammasat University, where he was well known for his writings on public affairs. Professor Direk died in 1967.

Jane Keyes has been engaged in research in and on Thailand and Southeast Asia since first becoming a Research Assistant in the Far Eastern and Southeast Asian Division of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. After completing her M.A. in Government at Cornell University in 1962, she collaborated with her husband, Charles Keyes, on several Thai research projects and has since held editorial positions at the Journal of Asian Studies.

silkwormbooks.com

A history of Thailand through Chinese eyes
30/01/2011

The autobiography of Chinese immigrant and journalist U Ji Yeah has been translated into Thai by his daughter

What makes Hok Sip Pee Pone Talay (60 Years of Overseas Chinese), a book written by the late veteran journalist U Ji Yeah and translated into Thai by his daughter, former journalist and writer Panadda Lertlam-ampai, stand out from other history books on the same topic is the writer's ability to mix lively prose and brief yet arresting narrative style with personal insights and historic facts.


HOK SIP PEE PONE TALAY: Available at all good bookshops for 385 baht.

In Hok Sip Pee Pone Talay, which became a best-seller when it was published in Chinese in 1983 by Hong Kong's South China Press, the writer creates a wonderful autobiography about his life as a young Chinese immigrant, who left poverty-plagued China for Indonesia in 1917, when he was only 12. He migrated to Thailand in 1930, and spent a stint in Singapore during World War II before returning to settle in Thailand where he worked for Chinese-language newspapers, later becoming an editor.

U Ji Yeah starts the first of the book's 105 chapters by explaining the cause of the Chinese exodus.

Warfare drove the diaspora, starting 300 years ago when the Manchu Qing dynasty overthrew the Ming dynasty, a regime founded by the majority Han Chinese. Since then, the Han Chinese have migrated from the mainland to other parts of the world.


SIAM SETTLERS : Left to right, shops owned by overseas Chinese on Sampheng Road, and chinese labourers squat on benches as they eat their meals. This style of sitting generated the new term ‘Yong Yong Lao’—cheap food stall as ‘Yong Yong’ in Thai means to sit on one’s haunches or squat.

Thailand (Siam at that time) was one of the major destinations for boats from Swatow (Shantou), a port in Guangdong province. The fare to Siam was cheaper than to other Southeast Asian countries, which may explain why the majority of overseas Chinese in Thailand are from Guangdong.

Within the first few pages, the book offers maps and well-researched facts to explain migration routes from various locations such as Quanzhou in Fujian province, Guangzhou (Canton) and Shantou in Guangdong; the information helps readers understand the various origins and dialects of Chinese immigrants _ Hakka, Hokkien, Hainanese and Teochew.


PIONEER: Photo of the late veteran journalist U Ji Yeah.

Although the book is partly a memoir, the writer does not delve much into his personal life and emotions, nor dwell on his personal distress. A pioneer of Chinese-language newspapers in Thailand, U Ji Yeah witnessed many important events during his lifetime. In 1958, during the regime of Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat, he was imprisoned for five years on charges of being a communist and had as cell mates prominent intellectuals such as Suwat Voradiloek and the late Thongbai Thongpao. He was also Chinese-language teacher to Jit Bhumisak, the left-wing social critic and writer.

Perhaps U Ji Yeah is a professional journalist through and through, and what real journalists often do _ rather than telling their own story _ is observe and make sense of the world around them: What drove him and other Chinese to migrate, the consequences and changes, based on his experiences in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore during World War II.
Readers will understand the viewpoints of overseas Chinese towards the changes they had to face when moving to new countries.

The book also covers the history of Thailand since 1930 as told through politics, business, culture, entertainment, food, communities and even nightlife, not to mention Chinese language newspapers in Thailand, which U Ji Yeah played a major role in laying the foundations for, and helping to develop.

He made an extra effort to cover stories of the various triads, Chinese associations and groups of Chinese immigrants as well as covering educational issues such as Chinese schools being closed by Field Marshall Plaek Pibulsongkram.

There are tales of tycoons, the Chinese immigrants who made it big such as the Wanglee and Lamsam families, and particularly the role of overseas Chinese in Bangkok's Chinatown in supporting the Kuomintang Party and Dr Sun Yat Sen who visited Thailand and came to Yaowarat area to canvas support.

These colourful and valuable tales may not be new, but they are more interesting and livelier here than in textbooks written by armchair academics.

What makes the book vibrant is the impressive Chinese language skill of the translator, U Ji Yeah's own daughter. Her closeness to and understanding of the writer will make readers forget that they are reading a translation.

This is a book befitting the upcoming Chinese New Year, which falls on Feb 3.



For history buffs, Hok Sip Pee Pone Talay is not to be missed as few books on this subject are so well written. It's ideal for descendants of overseas Chinese and, as U Ji Yeah reiterates, it is almost impossible to find Thais without Chinese blood in their veins.

bangkokpost.com

asiabooks.com



History in five colours
Manote Tripathi



In one elegantly crafted bowl, bencharong serves Sino-Siamese diplomacy, palace intrigue, even a civil servant's murder

The five-colour porcelain known as bencharong represents the glory of Siamese culture. It was made in China - but exclusively for Siamese royalty

It came to symbolise the opulence of the Chakri Dynasty court, as well as Bangkok's prosperity.

You won't see many of the original pieces in our museums, however, or even in the palaces open to the public. They're in the private collections of well-to-do citizens.

"These pieces are expensive - a bencharong bowl can fetch Bt500,000 - so you can't expect to see them in public," says Pim Prapai Bisalputra, who, with Jeffery Sng, has produced a book that finally offers a broad accounting of these treasures.

Sng and Pim spent three years writing "Bencharong & Chinaware in the Court of Siam: The Surat Osathanugrah Collection", the most comprehensive coffee-table book on the subject in English to date.

Surat - a politician who was also an acclaimed photographer - owned what was arguably the largest collection in the Kingdom. Before he died he commissioned the authors to write specifically about his bencharong rather than his blue-and-white chinaware, a better-known subject.

Pim, whose great grandfather, Phraya Bisanpholpanich, imported Chinese porcelain to Bangkok, says she and Sng set out to share the whole story of bencharong, to "tell the world that how successful the Chakri Dynasty was in running the country".

"We wanted to write about bencharong because it represents the art of the Siamese royal court. Bencharong was originally made only for the royal court of Siam, and not many people know this."

Their research led to Ayutthaya in the 15th century, when the kings had blue-and-white Ming porcelain adorned with Siamese motifs.

These pieces were the original "colourware" and the precursors to bencharong - the name literally means "five colours". The royal court of Ayutthaya issued custom orders to artisans in Jingdezhen in China's southern Jiangxi province.

Technology improved during the Qing Dynasty in the 1800s that enabled more colours to be applied to the ceramics, and bencharong was coming to Siam by the late Ayutthaya Period.The decoration is intricate, and the multi-coloured glaze tends to be opaque, with extensive use of white enamel.

The Surat collection includes fine examples of late-Ayutthaya bencharong in both green and pink - famille verte and famille rose.

Precious few pieces survived the Burmese army's destruction of the old capital in 1767. The best were probably smashed in the bombardment or carried off by looters.

What did survive was handed down through the generations as family heirlooms. The most commonly seen bencharong came from rural temples where it was hidden in the midst of war and the subsequent raids of profiteers.

Sng points out that Bangkok was bigger and more prosperous than any previous Siamese capital. Trade relations were early on established with the Qing court, and with them the resumption of custom orders for chinaware for the royal household.

"Colourware became the signature porcelain of the Qing court," Pim says. "Thai tastes switched from blue and white to colourware, which led to the creation of bencharong for the Siamese court."

The bencharong sent to Bangkok was of higher quality than anything seen in Ayutthaya or Thonburi, she adds. The patterns, motifs, glazing, colouring and enamelling began to take on different characteristics.

There was nothing more luxurious than the Chakri Dynasty tea sets, Pim says.

Siam's tribute trade came to an abruptend in 1851 when a diplomatic mission dispatched there by King Rama IV was robbed between Canton and Beijing and an interpreter was murdered.

Siam began importing porcelain from Europe instead, regarding it as higher quality anyway, Pim says.

"After 1851," Sng points out, "no court officials were sent to China to oversee the production of bencharong, as they'd done since the Ayutthaya Period. They had always gone to make sure the designs and motifs conformed to the royal orders."

Nevertheless, later in Rama V's reign, he pursued an enthusiasm for collecting Chinese porcelain, especially tea sets.

The story of Siam's chinaware and benjarong is full of intrigue. Pim laments that, after Siam's 1932 shift from absolute to constitution monarchy, much of the royal porcelain collection went missing, especially the vast array owned by the Prince of Nakhon Sawan, who fled into exile in Indonesia.

"He had only one day to collect his belongings before leaving," Pim says, calling the prince "the doyen of Thai culture and music".

"After 1932 everybody sold their heirlooms."

It's been claimed that it took the prince's aide a full month to liquidate the millions of baht worth of porcelain. Many of these pieces ended up on sale in the Werng Makhon Kasem Market.

Royal interest in the once-coveted ceramics declined with the advent of capitalism. At the same time, with the easing of restrictions on design, common people found they could now afford pricey tea sets - bearing illustrations from old folktales rather than the delicate motifs of old.

The authors credit royalty for Bangkok's runaway economic success.

"Ayutthaya was 400 years old. Bangkok is 200 years old," says Sng. "We know we live better in Bangkok than they did in Ayutthaya - the economic prosperity is obvious today.

"But we'll need to wait another 200 years for a final judgement as to which dynasty was more solid."

>>> "Bencharong & Chinaware in the Court of Siam: The Surat Osathanugrah Collection" is available at Asia Books for Bt2,200.

nationmultimedia.com

A Veteran Journalist's View of Today's World

And it isn't encouraging



This is an excerpt from Reporter: Forty Years Covering Asia (Talisman Publishers, hardback, 384 pp., S$42) by John McBeth, who among other things spent a quarter-century as the longest-serving correspondent for the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review.

McBeth looks with trepidation at how standards have fallen in today's world of journalism.

The book is available in local bookshops.

When young people today tell me that they want to be print journalists, I feel almost pity. Reading the printed word these days comes a poor second to television and the internet, newspapers and magazines are dying all around us, and no one seems to have worked out a formula for commercial success on the web. For some reason, the so-called content providers are always at the bottom of the heap, yet if they are doing their jobs and are considered to be well informed, everyone wants to hear their opinions. Surely that is worth more than the almost laughable word rates they offer these days.

asiasentinel.com

From Dictatorship to Democracy
by Gene Sharp



Title: From Dictatorship to Democracy

Author: Gene Sharp

ISBN: 1-880813-09-2

Published: 1993, May 2002, June 2003

Languages available: Amharic, Arabic, Azeri, Belarusian, Burmese, Chin (Burma), Jing-paw (Burma), Karen (Burma), Mon (Burma), Chinese (Simplified Mandarin), Chinese (Traditional Mandarin), English, Farsi, French, Indonesian, Khmer (Cambodia), Kyrgyz, Pashto, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Tibetan, Tigrigna, Vietnamese

Price: $6.00 each (discounts available for bulk orders)

You may order or download this publication.

A short description of the history of this book, From Dictatorship to Democracy, may be downloaded here.

Contents: FROM CHAPTER 1...

In recent years various dictatorships—of both internal and external origin—have collapsed or stumbled when confronted by defiant, mobilized people. Often seen as firmly entrenched and impregnable, some of these dictatorships proved unable to withstand the concerted political, economic, and social defiance of the people.

Since 1980 dictatorships have collapsed before the predominantly nonviolent defiance of people in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Slovenia, Madagascar, Mali, Bolivia, and the Philippines. Nonviolent resistance has furthered the movement toward democratization in Nepal, Zambia, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Uruguay, Malawi, Thailand, Bulgaria, Hungary, Zaire, Nigeria, and various parts of the former Soviet Union (playing a significant role in the defeat of the August 1991 attempted hard-line coup d’état).

In addition, mass political defiance has occurred in China, Burma, and Tibet in recent years. Although those struggles have not brought an end to the ruling dictatorships or occupations, they have exposed the brutal nature of those repressive regimes to the world community and have provided the populations with valuable experience with this form of struggle.

The collapse of dictatorships in the above named countries certainly has not erased all other problems in those societies: poverty, crime, bureaucratic inefficiency, and environmental destruction are often the legacy of brutal regimes. However, the downfall of these dictatorships has minimally lifted much of the suffering of the victims of oppression, and has opened the way for the rebuilding of these societies with greater political democracy, personal liberties, and social justice.
[....]

Download PDF file

aeinstein.org

tualobang.blogspot.com

Malaysia's Mahathir writes memoir defending legacy
Mar 8, 2011


Former Malayisan Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (left) speaking at the Islamic Finance Conference, as Association of Malay Entrepreneurs (Kesuma) president Ibrahim Ariff looks on. Dr Mahathir has released an autobiography that defends decisions made during his 22-year rule.
ST FILE PHOTO

KUALA LUMPUR (Malaysia) - FORMER Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has released an autobiography that defends decisions he made during his 22-year rule.

Dr Mahathir was one of Asia's longest-serving leaders when he retired in 2003. His critics have long accused him of eroding key rights such as free speech and repressing democratic institutions such as the judiciary and media.

The 85-year-old Dr Mahathir wrote in his 800-page memoir that he 'tried his best' but would leave it to 'the people of today and the future to pass judgment' on his legacy.

The book became available on Tuesday and was highly publicised.

MPH, the country's largest bookstore chain, displayed posters that declared Dr Mahathir's memoir was 'set to be the best-selling book of 2011.'

straitstimes.com

THE LAND OF THE WHITE ELEPHANT

Frank Vincent

Sights and scenes in South east Asia. A personal narrative of travel and adventure in Farther India - embracing the countries of Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Cochin-China. 1871-1872

http://www.reninc.org/BOOKSHELF/Land...nt_Vincent.pdf

21Mb pdf file

bookmarked this thread, feel like my wallet will get lighter getting hold of some of these books and look forward to more additions. Thanks

Nowhere to be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime,
edited by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West.

The seventh title in the Voice of Witness series, Nowhere to be Home is an eye-opening collection of oral histories from men and women whose lives have been deeply altered by the county’s oppressive military regime.

VOICEOFWITNESS.ORG



It is a powerful collection of first-person testimonies from Burmese people who have been affected by the repression of Burma’s military regime. The testimonies were compiled and edited by writers Maggie Lemere and Zoë West. The book is the seventh title in the Voice of Witness series, and is available in the US from March 15, 2011.

To learn more about the book and the work of Voice of Witness, visit www.voiceofwitness.org. The Irrawaddy has been given access to excerpts of some of those testimonies. This week, we feature Aye Maung.

AYE MAUNG

Aye Maung is an outgoing man of Chin descent—a Burmese ethnic minority—who works for the Chin Refugee Center. It is clear that he has a lot to say; he is passionate about telling people of his experience as a prisoner of the State Peace and Development Council (the military junta that rules Burma), as he believes the issue must be exposed.

“They made me line up with other prisoners, and they chained us all together, one by one. They put us in a military car, but they didn’t tell us anything. But as soon as they had called us that night, we knew we would be made porters. All prisoners are afraid to become porters. We were afraid, because we had heard that most porters die. Only the prisoners who have money can pay to not become porters.


The government doesn’t have much money, but they have many prisoners. So for them, it makes sense to use us for army porters—if we die, they lose nothing. But if they use horses or helicopters to carry their loads, the government loses money if the horse dies or the helicopter breaks. But it’s easy to take a prisoner and make him a porter.

We left Bahloat on January 28, 2006, and began walking to the Au Dou Rai army camp. We followed the stream, but it was hard. There was no trail. We were carrying so much—machine guns, ammunition, and rations for all the soldiers and for ourselves.

Some machine guns were so big that eight people had to carry them. We hadn’t gone through training, and we weren’t allowed to rest, so some porters couldn’t handle it. If one of us couldn’t walk any farther, the soldiers would just kill him. They didn’t want to leave any prisoners behind alive. And if someone tried to take a rest without permission, the soldiers would beat him with their guns. They would beat him so much that he couldn’t walk anymore, and they’d leave him there to die. People kept dying. My friends kept dying.

When we walked through combat areas, the SPDC soldiers would make the porters walk in the front. Sometimes there were landmines. One time, I saw a porter step on one and lose both of his feet. But another time, it happened to a captain. As always, we were walking with the porters in front of the army. But the porter didn’t set off the landmine, and the captain behind him did. Two soldiers lost their legs.

But most of the time, I didn’t think about the landmines. I just walked. The load was so heavy, and we were always very tired. No time to think about the landmines, only about how we could carry on and get to rest. After the first village we stayed in, other villages we passed were empty. We saw no one. The SPDC had cleared the villages.

It took us five days to walk to the Au Dou Rai army camp. By the time we arrived, only 147 porters remained. Thirty-eight people had died on the journey to the camp.

When we made it to the camp, we could finally take a rest. We were very, very tired. But after a week, another bad thing happened. Four porters who were sick tried to flee, and the army caught them. The soldiers killed those four people very brutally. They broke their arms, and cut their tongues. Then they hanged them from a tree, and they made the rest of us watch. They wanted us to be afraid so no more porters would try to run away again.”

A Porter's Tale

33 Revolutions Per Minute is, as it subtitle states, a history of protest songs. But it is a wider, deeper and more ambitious undertaking than that implies. Each chapter is named after one song, from Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ (1939) to Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ (2004), but in many cases, the song is a point from which to hang a larger social, political and cultural history of the times. Moreover, there is a risk that this book could be treated as one to dip into, as a reference work, which would rob it of its overall narrative force and lead the reader to miss the recurring themes and figures which populate its pages. Among its concerns is the question posed by Billy Bragg: ”that incredible feeling that you get from listening to music – invigorating, empowering – is that just a transient experience or can it be focussed onto reality and actually inspire people?”

https://theasylum.wordpress.com/2011...ns-per-minute/

This extraordinary book had its genesis in a series of concerts first staged in 2004. Over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, one hundred of his songs from the previous three decades. In between songs he told stories about them, and from those little tales grew How to Make Gravy, a memoir like no other. Each of its hundred chapters, also in alphabetical order by song title, consists of lyrics followed by a story, the nature of the latter taking its cue from the former. Some pieces are confessional, some tell Kelly's personal and family history, some take you on a road tour with the band, some form an idiosyncratic history of popular music, some are like small essays, some stand as a kind of how-to of the songwriter's art – from the point of inspiration to writing, honing, collaborating, performing, recording and reworking.

How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly | Penguin Books Australia

Is there a book you've read recently that's made an impression?

One that I liked is The Globalization Paradox by Dani Rodrik (a critique of free trade). That was very powerful.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva

forbes.com



The Globalization Paradox:
Democracy and the Future of the World Economy [Hardcover]
Dani Rodrik (Author)



Surveying three centuries of economic history, a Harvard professor argues for a leaner global system that puts national democracies front and center.

From the mercantile monopolies of seventeenth-century empires to the modern-day authority of the WTO, IMF, and World Bank, the nations of the world have struggled to effectively harness globalization's promise.

The economic narratives that underpinned these eras—the gold standard, the Bretton Woods regime, the "Washington Consensus"—brought great success and great failure.

In this eloquent challenge to the reigning wisdom on globalization, Dani Rodrik offers a new narrative, one that embraces an ineluctable tension: we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization.

When the social arrangements of democracies inevitably clash with the international demands of globalization, national priorities should take precedence.

Combining history with insight, humor with good-natured critique, Rodrik's case for a customizable globalization supported by a light frame of international rules shows the way to a balanced prosperity as we confront today's global challenges in trade, finance, and labor markets.

About the Author

Dani Rodrik is the Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

amazon.com

Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land
Joel Brinkley.
Public Affairs. US$27.99.
Available on Amazon.



Is Cambodia the worst place on earth?

It’s a contender. Per capita income is one-third of North Korea’s. Half of Cambodia’s children receive only two or three years of schooling. The irrigation systems are so poor that farmers manage only one harvest per year, while their counterparts in neighboring countries enjoy two to four.

These statistics only scratch the surface, according to former New York Times reporter Joel Brinkley. In his new book Cambodia’s Curse, Brinkley returns 29 years later to the country where he made his name – he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for coverage of post-war Cambodia for the Louisville Courier-Journal-- and he discovers how much has changed since the 1970s and how little has changed since the 1370s.

continues :

Asia Sentinel - How Bad Are Things in Cambodia?

asiasentinel.com

The Anzac Book

Written and Illustrated in Gallipoli by the Men of Anzac (1916)

Read the speech given by Les Carlyon at the launch of the ANZAC Book.











"The Anzac Book - Written and Illustrated in Gallipoli by the Men of Anzac"
Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York | 1916 | ISBN: none | 170 pgs. | PDF | 89MB

RapidShare

ebookee.org

Phnom Penh Noodle House Owner Releases Memoir
Hanna Raskin
Thu., May 5 2011



Every restaurant owner has a tale of the obstacles he overcame to become a small business owner. But Seng "Sam" Ung's story is far more harrowing than most.

Ung, owner of the tremendously popular Phnom Penh Noodle House in the International District, a few weeks ago released his memoir, I Survived the Killing Fields: The True Life Story of a Cambodian Refugee. With the help of writer Thomas McElroy, Ung shares his account of his Cambodian childhood and its upending by the relentlessly brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

Ung, an average motorcycle-riding, Westerns-loving teenager, grew up working in his parents' restaurant. He was 20 years old when his hometown fell to the Khmer Rouge, igniting a horrific era of suffering and death that enveloped Ung's family. Ung fills chapters with unspeakable memories of watching his relatives starve.

"Hunger compels a person to do anything to stop the pain of it," writes Ung, who remembers trying to trap field rats and coax snakes out of their holes.

"I skinned him out, made a fire and roasted him right there," Ung writes of an encounter with a blue snake. "No salt, no seasoning, nothing. It had been a long time since I had any meat, and I remember thinking at the time that it was the best meat I had ever tasted."

Surrounded by violence, Ung fixated on his plans for the future.

"To keep myself from going crazy, I started a recipe book," he writes. "It was my thinking if and when this phase of my life ever ended, I could start a restaurant using all of the old recipes. I talked with elders in our village about their best recipes."

Later, after the Khmer Rouge's rule ended, a fellow Cambodian intercepted Ung on the road back to his hometown and offered to hire him as a cook. Ung agreed, "although there was no soy sauce in Cambodia" since fighters had destroyed the manufacturing plants.

Ung improvised a "pat lo" with water, salt, MSG, mung beans, tamarind, chili, and pork. His dish--and the cart from which he sold it--became enormously successful.

After Ung and his wife were given permission to emigrate to Seattle, Ung took a job at a downtown restaurant, cooking hamburgers, pancakes, and fried chicken. Despite a few linguistic hurdles--"I thought to myself: Hold the onion? How can I cook and hold an onion?"--Ung went on to a series of kitchen jobs at Ivar's and the Rainier Club, where he learned to sculpt fruit.

Ung opened Seattle's first Cambodian restaurant in 1987.

"On opening day, I thought back to my ESL class where my teacher asked me what I wanted to do in the future," Ung writes. "I told her my dream was to open a small café someday. And here I was, on this day with my dream coming true."

Autographed copies of Ung's book are available at the Wing Luke Museum and Phnom Penh Noodle House.

Location Info:
Phnom Penh Noodle House
660 S. King St., Seattle, WA

Posted by Khmerization at Friday, May 06, 2011

khmerization.blogspot.com

Isn't Cambodia a safe country now ?
why doesn't he go home , then the west will have room for the next wave of refugees seeking a safe haven .
instead they prefer to stay in west making piles of money and overcrowding services etc , and thus the indigenous people are not so welcoming to the new asylum seekers .
For that reason I have no interest in reading this book.

Fall of Giants, Ken Follett

If you like exceptional historical fiction this is another form Ken Follett. Make sure you have plenty of time on your hands. 1,000 pages of hard to put down reading.



Fall of Giants is a magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in the Century trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families – American, German, Russian, English and Welsh – as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage.

Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man’s world in the Welsh mining pits…Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House…two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription and revolution…Billy’s sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London….

These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty.

PRACHATHIPATHAI PUEN LUED: MUEN MA KLAI TAE MAI PAI TUENG NAI:
By Rungmanee Mekhasobhon
470pp,
2010 Ban Phra Arthit.
Available (in Thai only) from all good bookshops, 295 baht.

The blood-stained road to democracy
22/05/2011

As Thailand enters election season, a timely look back at a dark period in the country's modern development _ the turbulent decade leading up to Black May

Democracy rarely takes root without bloodshed, and the Thai case is no different as Rungmanee Mekhasobhon details in her look into an important decade in Thailand's modern development.



She begins with the end of the rule of Gen Prem Tinsulanonda, an unelected prime minister who ruled over elected governments for 12 years, and ends with Black May, the popular uprising in 1992 against the rule of another unelected general, Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon. The leader of that uprising, Maj Gen Chamlong Srimuang, was on the side of the "angels", too many of whom lost their lives. snip

Rungmanee's book's style is striking. Short, crisp stories _ some profiles, some reviews of incidents still unsolved, some background pieces _ are mixed with fresh interviews of the protagonists, including an ex-prime minister, an ex-prime minister's son and an academic, Gen Suchinda, Maj Gen Chamlong, Anand Panyarachun, Kraisak Choonhavan and Dr Prinya Thewanaruemitkul. She includes a DVD of the BBC's record of the events of Black May, which many in Thailand could not see on local television due to censors.

The pairing of text and video reflects her years of experience as an investigative reporter for the now defunct news magazine Soo Anakot and for the BBC World Service (Thai Section), which led to local radio news programmes after her return to Thailand.

Given her experience, it was no surprise that she was able to reach so many usually inaccessible sources.

Such access enabled her to produce compelling and in-depth portraits, such as that on Prasert Subsunthorn, the guru of Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh.

Her profile on Prasert is fascinating, as he has always been a shadowy figure, suspected of being behind Gen Chavalit's promotion of a "National Presidium" and also widely believed to have assisted in the drafting of a document that persuaded the return of students who fled to the jungle before or after October, 1973.

Political scientists have also known that he was involved in the now-defunct Communist Party of Thailand.

Like a good journalist, Rungmanee provides balance, and also profiles a well known character on the right of the political spectrum, Chalerm Yubamrung .

Useful for students of Thai politics and diplomats on the Thai desk, Rungmanee also spells out the family tree of the late Gen Chatichai Choonhaven, showing his roots and how three of his relatives are now with three different political parties, none of which is the successor of the one he set up.

Amusingly, she titles her first chapter "Sin Yook Nak Kha Haeng Loum Chao Phraya; Khao Soo Yook Pla Lai Sai Skate" (End of the Killer of the Chao Phraya Basin Era; Enter the Era of the Eel on Skates).

Instructive is her quoting of the country's then most acidic columnist expressing his weariness with the rule of "Pa Prem", as the general is still called. The columnist, of course, was the late former prime minister MR Kukrit Pramoj.

In favour of true democracy, the late guru from Soi Suan Phlu is well remembered for writing in a column for Siam Rath newspaper that one had to listen to "the people's voice", or what he called "se savo". During the early 1970s, MR Kukrit was a source of inspiration for the generation of young people supporting the student-led uprising of Oct 14, 1973.

Rungmanee's book details the corruption that brought down the government of Gen Chatichai, dubbed the "buffet government" by journalists. But she does give the same government credit for progress on the Cambodian issue. Thanks largely to his advisers, headed by his son Kraisak Choonhavan, the government opened a channel of communication with Phnom Penh through Sok An, Prime Minister Hun Sen's right hand man, who acted as a go-between.

Observers saw that Gen Chatichai's advisers had little time for the Foreign Ministry, and the feeling seemed mutual, especially among ministry officials who had been in charge of bilateral relations for years. However, they had to take heed because among the advisers was a Cambodia specialist, current Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra, who previously taught at Chulalongkorn University and had written some sharp papers on the Cambodia issue.

By presenting facts, the weapon of journalists, Rungmanee demands closure on two issues: What happened to labour leader Thanong Po-an, and who burned down the Nang Loeng police station?

I believe that these questions must be answered before Thailand can go forward with democracy. The country cannot keep trying to push away what it doesn't want to remember.

The book raises the question of why persist with a Cold War mentality long after that era has ended. As is obvious to most observers, it is nearly impossible to keep anything secret in the name of national security. The internet has changed all that.

Rungmanee's account of Black May points to how vital disclosure and closure are to democracy. There must be transparency. If people designated as "missing" have died, relatives must be told, compensation paid to wives, or husbands, or parents and children, and proper rites performed.

Too many people went missing during "Black May". The rumour mill, as reporters recall, churned for years. It was the same during the 1970s after the atrocities at Ban Na Sai in the Northeast, which was one of the catalysts for Oct 14, 1973.

Ordinary villagers there were accused of supplying food to and being informants for communists. Now ex-communists are in a leading political party and one has held a prominent government post. If they can be pardoned, why, observers ask, can't the truth about the missing people be revealed?

To leave the matter unsettled is, in the eyes of those watching democratic development, to ensure that democracy will always be tainted with blood and the deaths of Black May will be in vain.

It has been more than 79 years since the first French-trained group of people called Khana Ras demanded an end to absolute monarchy. As it turned out, some of them were not such democrats, and one went into cahoots with the Japanese.

And so there was a royalist rebellion followed by coups and more coups.

Rungmanee has raised a good question and given us plenty of food for thought.

Cover-ups, such as those during the Black May period, no longer work.

Democracy means transparency, honesty and discussing problems rather than resorting to violence.

Thai people have a chance to vote for their representative to speak for them in parliament on July 3. They must insist that they be allowed to do so free of fear.

The sub-title of Rungmanee's book: Muen Ma Klai Tae Mai Pai Tueng Nai (Seemingly Democracy Has Come Far But It Has Not Moved Forward At All) offers a challenge to voters.

It is the responsibility of all voters, as well as those they elect and non-government groups to stress to people the importance of democratic choice, and the price that has been paid for it.

bangkokpost.com

Richard A. Ruth, In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War.
Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2011. x+275 pp.

From 1965 to 1972 Thailand aided the American war in Indochina by dispatching 37,644 military personnel to South Vietnam as part of the US State Department’s Free World Assistance Program. After America and South Korea, Thailand’s military contribution was the third largest of the Free World nations. The Queen’s Cobra Regiment, the first combat unit to arrive in 1967, was later supplemented by the Black Panther Division. Both units, located in the same area of operations between the port of Vung Tau and the US Air Force base at Bien Hoa, saw active combat, suffered casualties and fatalities, and killed many Vietnamese communist guerrillas. The aim of Richard Ruth’s study is to restore this forgotten episode in Southeast Asian military history and by doing so, to counter the prevailing historical interpretations of what took place.

snip

asiapacific.anu.edu.au

see full review in this thread :

https://teakdoor.com/issues/92358-tha...ml#post1779233

.

BP and the world's biggest oil spill
John Berthelsen
Thursday, 16 June 2011




In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took it Down.
By Stanley Reed and Alison Fitzerald.

Bloomberg Press, hardcover, 226 pp with index. US$21.95



BP, one of the world's largest integrated energy companies, was cleared June 15 to buy 30 percent of Reliance Industries' oil and gas blocks for $7.2 billion. Across Asia, BP has exploration and production facilities in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Pakistan. It manufactures chemicals in China, South Korea and Malaysia. It leads in the production of liquefied natural gas in China through joint ventures. It manufactures solar panels in India and markets lubricants and oil products throughout the region, with major retail operations in India and China.

Given the breadth and depth of BP's Asian operations, Asia collectively ought to pay attention to what happened on April 20, 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 men working on the platform and injuring 17 others. The Macondo Prospect well that the Deepwater Horizon was drilling would pour an average estimated 53,000 barrels of crude per day into the Gulf, ultimately spilling about 4.9 million barrels before the well was finally capped three months later, on July 15. It was the world's biggest oil spill ever.

The story of BP's disaster is told by Stanley Reed, the London bureau chief of Business Week, now owned by Bloomberg, and Allison Fitzgerald, a Bloomberg investigative reporter, in a book appropriately titled In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took it Down, because it points out that although the Deepwater Horizon was the worst of BP's environmental disasters, it wasn't the first, and it appears to have stemmed from a culture that demanded far too many shortcuts in the race to capture a significant percentage of the world's fossil fuels, in ever-deeper water.

"The story behind the Macondo blowout is more than a story about technical failures or human error," the two write. "The root cause, we found, may lie in BP's particular corporate culture, which depends on and even celebrates risk-taking. The company's corporate DNA is different from its competitors, where engineering principles dominate. BP is more of a financial culture. BP is very creative at finding oil and persuading governments to open their doors. Bt is sometimes less good at everyday operations."

Indeed. As John Browne, later to become Lord Browne, sought to transform BP into a profit machine, maintenance of the company's far-flung operations suffered so badly that when other companies took over BP leases, they found maintenance to be so poor that they were alarmed, the authors write. As early as 2000, it was facing problems in the company's operations in Scotland. Browne was CEO from 1995 to 2007. An explosion at BP's massive Texas City refinery on March 23, 2005, took the lives of 16 workers. Shoddy maintenance after BP took over the oil pipelines at Prudhoe Bay resulted in two major oil spills.

"Because of Texas City and Alaska," the authors write, "and a series of smaller infractions, congressional investigators, the Labor Department and the Justice Department have constantly monitored BP refineries and pipelines. The company paid a US$50 million criminal fine for the Texas City disaster, and another US$12 million for Alaska. It remained on criminal probation when the Deepwater Horizon exploded. OSHA (The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration) in June 2010 fined the company another US$50 million for failing to fix the problems at Texas City, one of the conditions of its probation."

BP's safety violations, the authors write, far outstrip any of those recorded by its rivals and several industry officials and investigators say the company's record can't be justified by its size. They point to Exxon Mobil, the poster child for previous environmental irresponsibility when the Exxon Valdez supertanker went ashore in Prince William Sound In Alaska, spilling somewhere between 260,000 and 750,000 barrels of crude into Alaska's pristine waters in what was then termed one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters ever.

When Lord Browne turned operations over to the luckless Tony Hayward in 2007, Hayward set out to correct the institutional problems that Brown had bequeathed to him. He didn't have a lot of success. In From June 2007 to February 2010 – even before the Deepwater Horizon blew up – OSHA had fined BP for 760 "serious and willful" violations of worker safety. The next worst offender in the oil industry, the authors write, was Sunoco, which had just eight during the same period.

In January 2010, congressional investigators detailed five events over the previous 18 months detailing continuing maintenance problems including an explosion that sent 14 and 28-foot lengths of pipe flying through the air to land 900 feet away. Two BP contract workers on the North Slope were crushed to death by their own vehicles.

During the three months in which crude flowed unchecked into the gulf, ruining the shrimping industry, oiling hundreds of miles of what has been called the Redneck Riviera and delivering up a massive political crisis for US President Barack Obama, Hayward would eventually become the congress's favorite punching bag before being ousted in favor of Robert Dudley, a traditional Texas oilman who is now running what used to be a quintessential British company.

The Exxon Valdez spill was dwarfed by the Deepwater Horizon disaster by a factor of nearly 100. But, the authors write, the Alaskan disaster initiated a dramatic change in the way Exxon Mobil approached its drilling and exploration methods. The US energy giant, now gun-shy, has regularly walked away from unpredictable or unstable sites rather than dare another environmental catastrophe.

It remains to be seen if BP, whose roots go back 100 years when it was founded as the Anglo-Persian Oil Co., and which in its heyday was powerful enough to get the British and American governments to bring down regimes that got in its way, will change its culture as Exxon Mobil has done. Out of the purview of prying western eyes – the hot glare of television cameras in the Gulf, Texas and the North Slope – oil companies can get up to considerable mischief. The oil majors' activities in Nigeria, for instance, have been called an even bigger disaster than Deepwater Horizon. The oil industry's activities across the globe are responsible for huge environmental disasters. What they are up to in some Asian countries remains to be seen.

In Deep Water is a valuable record of BP's disastrous stewardship. But it has to be said that the book is also a frustrating read that required serious editing. Far too often the authors double back on themselves, inserting unrelated passages of history here and there that break up the flow of the narrative. Passages are repeated verbatim, as if the authors were cutting and pasting lots of material and sometimes repeating stuff. The book, published by the Bloomberg Press, appears to be a new entry by Bloomberg into a game previously dominated by Wall Street Journal reporters who were better organized, or perhaps better edited. If it goes into a second edition, one hopes the mistakes will be cleaned up.

asiasentinel.com