Book picks similar to
Land of Jade. A Journey from India through Northern Burma to China by Bertil Lintner
burma
myanmar
southeast-asia
r-book-club
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
Frances FitzGerald - 1972
With a clarity and insight unrivaled by any author before it or since, Frances FitzGerald illustrates how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam.
Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam
Lien-Hang T. Nguyen - 2012
This riveting narrative takes listeners from the marshy Mekong Delta swamps to the bomb-saturated Red River Delta, from the corridors of power in Hanoi and Saigon to the Nixon White House, from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow, all to reveal that peace never had a chance in Vietnam. Hanois War renders transparent the internal workings of Americas most elusive enemy during the Cold War and shows that the war fought during the peace negotiations was bloodier and more far-reaching than thought before. Using never-before-seen archival materials, Nguyen explores the politics of warmaking and peacemaking from various perspectives, presenting a uniquely international portrait.
In America: Tales from Trump Country
Caitriona Perry - 2017
In her first book, she goes beyond the news reports and delves into the American heartland where she witnessed the rise of Trump at first hand.
DC Confidential: The Controversial Memoirs of Britain's Ambassador to the US at the Time of 9/11 and the Run-up to the Iraq War
Christopher Meyer - 2005
A riveting and candid memoir of life behind the diplomatic scenes, Meyer's book is an honest account of what he saw, what he heard, and how he felt.
Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare
Philip Short - 2000
He was struck by Pol Pot's charm and charisma, yet, soon after, the leader would emerge as the architect of one of the most radical and ruthless experiments in social engineering ever undertaken. His egalitarian utopia released a reign of terror that would result in one in every five Cambodians - more than a million people - perishing in the killing fields of from hunger.Why did it happen? How did an idealistic dream of justice and prosperity mutate into one of humanity's worst nightmares? To answer these questions, Short traveled through Cambodia, interviewing former Khmer Rouge leaders and sifting through previously closed archives around the world. Key figures, including Khlen Samphan and Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's brother-in-law and foreign minister, speak here for the first time.Philip Short's masterly narrative reveals how Pol Pot engineered his country's desolation, fashining the definitive portrait of the man who headed one of the most enigmatic and terrifying regimes of modern times.(back cover)
Pocket Piketty: A Handy Guide to "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
Jesper Roine - 2017
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century makes a powerful case that wealth, and accumulated wealth, tends to stay where it lands: and with the passage of time, just gets bigger…and bigger.But how many of us who bought or borrowed the book–or even, perhaps, reviewed it–have read more than a fraction of its 696 pages? How many more shuddered at the thought of committing $40 to such a venture? And how many of Piketty’s groundshaking concepts have gone unappreciated, all for want of intellectual stamina?Deliverance is at hand in the form of Pocket Piketty, written in clear and accessible prose by an experienced economist and teacher–and one whose work was relied on by Piketty for his masterpiece. In this handy and slim volume, Jesper Roine explains all things Piketty.
Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans
Alan Riding - 1984
With portraits of Mexico's top leaders, about a nation whose stability is vital to our national well-being.
Beyond Bogota: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia
Garry Leech - 2008
Beyond Bogotá is framed around the eleven hours that Leech was held captive by the FARC, Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla group, in August of 2006. He recalls nearly thirty years of travel and work in Latin America while weaving in a historical context of the region and on-the-ground reporting with each passing hour of his detention.More than $5 billion in U.S. aid over the past seven years has failed to end Colombia's civil conflict or reduce cocaine production. Leech finds that ordinary Colombians, not drug lords, have suffered the most and that peasants and indigenous peoples have been caught in the crossfire between the armed groups. Meanwhile, more than thirty Colombian journalists have been murdered over the last three decades, making Colombia one of the most dangerous countries in which to practice journalism. Consequently, the majority of the Western media rarely leave Bogotá to find the real story. Leech, however, learns the truth about the conflict and the U.S. war on drugs directly from the source: poor coca farmers whose fields and food crops have been sprayed with toxic aerial fumigations, female FARC guerrillas who see armed struggle as their only option, union organizers whose lives are threatened because they defend workers' rights, indigenous peoples whose communities have been forcibly displaced by the violence, and many others. Leech also investigates the presence of multinational oil and mining companies in Colombia by gaining access to army bases where U.S. soldiers train Colombian troops to fight the guerrillas in resource-rich regions and by visiting local villages to learn what the foreign presence has meant for the vast majority of the population. Drawing on unprecedented access to soldiers, guerrillas, paramilitaries, and peasants in conflict zones and cocaine-producing areas, Leech's documentary memoir is an epic tale of a journalist's search for meaning in the midst of violence and poverty, as well as a humanizing firsthand account that supplies fresh insights into U.S. foreign policy, the role of the media, and the plight of everyday Colombians caught in the midst of a brutal war.
Saigon Has Fallen
Peter Arnett - 2015
Arnett’s clear-eyed coverage incurred the wrath of President Lyndon Johnson and officials on all sides of the conflict. Writing candidly and vividly about his gambles and glories, Arnett also shares his fears and fights in reporting against the backdrop of war. Arnett places readers at the historic pivot-points of Vietnam: covering Marine landings, mountaintop battles, Saigon’s decline and fall, and the safe evacuation of a planeload of 57 infants in the midst of chaos. Peter Arnett’s sweeping view and his frank, descriptive, and dramatic writing brings the Vietnam War to life in a uniquely insightful way for this year’s 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Arnett won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for his Vietnam coverage. He later went on to TV-reporting fame covering the Gulf War for CNN. Includes 21 dramatic photographs from the AP Archive and the personal collection of Peter Arnett. About the Author Peter Arnett started as an intern at his local newspaper at age 18, but knew even then his interest was in covering the world. Less than a decade later, he was traveling the globe for The Associated Press, the first of several major American news organizations he would work for. His Vietnam War coverage for the AP won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1966. Arnett joined CNN at its birth in the early 1980s, earning a television Emmy for his live television coverage of the first Gulf War from Baghdad in 1991. Born in New Zealand in 1934, he later became an American citizen and now lives in Fountain Valley, CA. About The Associated Press The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP.
The Bookseller of Kabul
Åsne Seierstad - 2002
He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock—almost ten thousand books—in attics all over Kabul.But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and his hatred of censorship, he also has strict views on family life and the role of women. As an outsider, Åsne Seierstad found herself in a unique position, able to move freely between the private, restricted sphere of the women—including Khan’s two wives—and the freer, more public lives of the men.It is an experience that Seierstad finds both fascinating and frustrating. As she steps back from the page and allows the Khans to speak for themselves, we learn of proposals and marriages, hope and fear, crime and punishment. The result is a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.' to 'This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details—a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today’s Afghanistan.'
Into the Heart of Borneo
Redmond O'Hanlon - 1984
O'Hanlon, accompanied by friend and poet James Fenton and three native guides brings wit and humor to a dangerous journey.
Alaska Man: A Memoir of Growing Up and Living in the Wilds of Alaska
George Davis - 2017
He survives this perilous wheel of fortune, and thrives in the face of danger! I would like to add to why my book is important, is that we are true authentic Alaskans that live life off of the grid and that we have been entrepreneurs, making our living off of the land and sea. We are wilderness and off the grid consultants if that is important. On our website we have a variety of things we consult on from sport fishing, hunting, adventures, lodges/outfitters, developing or improving remote properties, and much more.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Barbara Demick - 2009
Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them. Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.
Not Out of Hate: A Novel of Burma
Journal Kyaw Ma Ma Lay - 1955
A journalist by trade, Lay applied her straightforward observational style with compassion and purpose to the story of Way Way, a teenage village girl whose quiet life assisting her father in his rice-brokerage business is disrupted by the arrival of U Saw Han, the cosmopolitan Burmese rice trader twenty years her senior. When she first encounters him, Way Way is entranced by his Western furnishings, servants, and mannerisms. The two marry, but before long, it becomes clear that U Saw Han’s love is a stifling one that seeks to obliterate her traditional ways.Not Out of Hate was enormously popular in Burma and went through several editions in the 1950s and 1960s. When Ohio University Press published its English translation, in 1991, it became the first significant fictional account of prewar Burma available in English since George Orwell’s Burmese Days, and provided a Burmese counterpoint to Orwell’s novel. Translated into English here for the first time, the novel is an engaging drama, finely observed work of social realism, and stirring rejection of Western cultural dominance.
To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan
Nicholas Schmidle - 2009
With the intimacy and good humor available only to the most fearless and open-eyed reporters, Schmidle narrates what was arguably the most turbulent period of Pakistan’s recent history, a time when President Pervez Musharraf lost his power and the Taliban found theirs, and when Americans began to realize that Pakistan’s fate is inextricably linked with our own.In February 2006 Schmidle had traveled to Pakistan hoping to learn about the place dubbed “the most dangerous country in the world.” It was while there that he befriended a radical cleric (who became an enemy of the state and was killed), came to crave the smell of tear gas (because it assured him that he was sufficiently close to the action), and in the end, was deported by the Pakistani authorities, managed to get back into the country, and was chased out a second time.