Is Vietnam the world's next Tiger Economy? Can it grow like Taiwan and South Korea did when they were Tiger Economies in the 1980s and '90s? Brook Taylor and Sam Korsmoe bring together more than five decades of in-country experience, observations, and connections to explore these questions and determine whether Vietnam will be a high-income nation by 2050.

For more than twenty-five years, Vietnam has been one of the most dynamic countries in the world in terms of GDP, trade, and investment growth while also increasing the living standards of the vast majority of its nearly 100 million citizens. Will the nation continue this growth trend for another twenty-five years? Blending their understanding of Vietnam's legacy and growth with thoughtful attention to current trends and developments, the authors consider the nation's economic future.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, is a community of multiple identities. Over time, its citizens' loyalties were formed around national and transnational frameworks involving ethnic, religious, and ideological affinities. In the post-independence period, they were affected by decolonization, nation-building, the Cold War, globalization, and China's rise. As a result, the region is emerging as a confluence of competing and overlapping identities.

In recent years, new collective imaginations about the region's future have appeared, committing member states to directions beyond the politico-economic realm. Yet there is a risk that more exclusive visions, based on national, religious, ethnic, or other allegiances, will hold sway.

This book unpacks these competing identities. Rich in ethnographic and historical material, it examines identities shaped by generational markers, transnational linkages, and shared experiences of violence.

Around the globe, an age-old truth persists: To annihilate my culture and identity, you must first destroy my language and writing. Whether through deliberate political policies or sheer neglect, minority communities teeter on the precipice of losing or have already lost their languages and unique scripts. This silent erosion is often overlooked amid the clamor of more prominent issues. This book stands as a clarion call to rectify this injustice.

At its heart lies a translation from an early nineteenth-century manuscript inscribed in the endangered old Shan script--a treasure understood by a few elderly souls in Burma (Myanmar). The author embarked on an odyssey, collaborating with monks and villagers in hamlets and monasteries to unravel the text's meaning.

Tai Herbalism offers a window into how the early Burmese addressed afflictions of both mind and body. Within its pages, Shan herbal remedies mingle with chants, spells, and rituals--a glimpse into the Shan magico-religious belief system. The book also unveils the once-thriving ecosystem of nineteenth-century Shan forests, an oasis of biodiversity. A precious medicinal index documents the plants and animal parts harnessed for healing. Since the manuscript's time, these forests have fallen to the march of time, with many species pushed to the brink of extinction. Yet this book stands as a beacon of hope, preserving a record of the past, with a dream that conservationists may someday breathe life back into this lost Eden.

That night, the rain poured and wind howled, raindrops crashing like solid objects onto the ground and water. A passenger boat from Ban Phaen to Bangkok, packed with people, pressed on through the current amidst the rising clamor of the rain and storm. . . . The boat capsizes in the torrent, and washed up on the shore the next morning are the sodden bodies of the many passengers who lost their lives.

Thus begins M. R. Kukrit Pramoj's classic novel set in the Thailand of the early 1950s and first published in 1954. The life of each passenger who perished is retraced from birth, revealing a complex web of experiences and emotions.

When the original Thai version of Letters from Thailand appeared in Bangkok in 1969, it was promptly awarded the SEATO Prize for Thai Literature. This new English translation reveals it as one of Thailand's most entertaining and enduring modern novels, and one of the few portrayals of the immigrant Chinese experience in urban Thailand.

Letters from Thailand is the story of Tan Suang U, a young man who leaves China to make his fortune in Thailand at the close of World War II, and ends up marrying, raising a family, and operating a successful business. The novel unfolds through his letters to his beloved mother in China.

In Tan Suang U's lively account of his daily life in Bangkok's bustling Chinatown, larger and deeper themes emerge: his determination to succeed at business in this strange new culture; his hopes for his family; his resentment at how easily his children embrace urban Thai culture at the expense of the Chinese heritage which he holds dear; his inability to understand or adopt Thai ways; and his growing alienation from a society that is changing too fast for him.

This handbook of slogans, interspersed with historical commentary and contextual analysis, describes the Khmer Rouge regime and exposes the horrific foundation upon which it constructed its reign of terror. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Phnom Penh. In the three years, eight months, and twenty days of their government, they made a tabula rasa of Cambodian society and culture, forcing the people to evacuate the cities and move to the countryside. They instituted a total collectivism based on the doctrine of Pol Pot-ism, the Cambodian version of fundamentalist Maoism.

Assembled in this collection are the sayings that make up a newspeak uttered by the Khmer Rouge cadres: slogans, maxims, advice, instructions, watchwords, orders, warnings, and threats. All were spoken in the name of the ominous Angkar--a faceless and lawless Organization--n order to indoctrinate, control, and terrorize the populace.

These sayings have been collected from survivors throughout Cambodia between 1991 and 1995. They form the macabre, bare-bones skeleton of Khmer Rouge ideology.

The most famous firsthand account of the Kingdom of Angkor was left by the imperial Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan. But Zhou's was not the only portrait of Angkor and the kingdoms that came before it. The Empire Looks South draws on other sources to provide new and engrossing perspectives on early Cambodia up to and including the time of Angkor. These sources include accounts in official Chinese histories, descriptions by Buddhist monks, reflections of Daoists searching for immortality, and reports by Chinese merchants seeking perfumes and other exotic goods.

The first kingdom of Cambodia, Funan, was centered on the lower Mekong. After its mysterious demise in the seventh century, Funan was succeeded by Zhenla, the Chinese name for Cambodia until the time of Zhou Daguan. Peter Harris provides details of the kingdom of Funan. He then describes the royal government and customs of Zhenla, while taking account of Cambodia's likely fragmentation at the time into several polities. The book concludes with accounts of Angkor in its final centuries, including an updated translation of Zhou Daguan's Record.

Here in one slim volume is a selection of the best-known and best-loved Lao folktales that have entertained the Lao people for generations. We meet the legendary trickster Xieng Mieng who matches his wits with merchants, monks, and kings. We find a quick-witted toad that terrifies tigers, a turtle that flies, a cadre of snails that race a rabbit, and a mynah bird that speaks five languages fluently.

The reader may recognize a whisper of Aesop or a Jataka tale, but each story is distinctively Lao, retold with Lao humor and charm reflecting a Buddhist culture in a Marxist state. Works by Anoulom Souvandouane, the foremost illustrator in Laos, enliven the stories.

This book is intended for modern students, inside or outside the classroom, as a work of reference rather than a teach yourself textbook. It presents an introductory sketch of Pali using both European and South Asian grammatical categories. In English-language works, Pali is usually presented in the traditional terms of English grammar, derived from the classical tradition, with which many modern students are unfamiliar. This work discusses and reflects upon those categories, and has an appendix devoted to them. It also introduces the main categories of traditional Sanskrit and Pali grammar, drawing on, in particular, the medieval Pali text Saddaniti, by Aggavamsa. Each grammatical form is illustrated by examples taken from Pali texts, mostly canonical. Although some previous knowledge of Sanskrit would be helpful, the book can also be used by those without previous linguistic training. A bibliographical appendix refers to other, complementary resources.

When the Khmer Rouge troops entered Phnom Penh on 17th April 1975, it seemed that the Cambodian revolution had been secured. During the following four years, Cambodian society was dramatically transformed at great cost in terms of human misery and death. Despite its outward display of total power, the regime of Democratic Kampuchea was deeply fragmented along factional lines within the Communist Party of Kampuchea which eventually ripped it apart. On the morning of 25th December 1978, a huge military force of the People's Army of Vietnam spearheaded a counter attack by the Kampuchean Front for National Salvation, led by a former KR commander, Heng Samrin. They found a country in ruins, the economy shattered and the people shocked and dispirited.

This book examines the Cambodian revolution before and after Pol Pot and attempts to explain the reasons for its ultimate failure. In particular, it traces the efforts of the post-DK regime, that of the People's Republic of Kampuchea, to rebuild both the state and the revolution. Many factors intervened to defeat their efforts to restore revolution. Nevertheless, the PRK did rebuild the state and the economy, and it helped return people's lives to the conditions of pre-revolutionary days.

For seven centuries, Chiang Mai has been the center of a lively culture and civilization in the hills of what is now northern Thailand. The Chiang Mai Chronicle, one of the most important histories of the region, was written in 1827 to explain the growth and strength of the Kingdom of Lan Na which Chiang Mai dominated, and to foresee a glorious future after a generation of warfare. This translation of The Chiang Mai Chronicle was prepared from a palm-leaf manuscript. Extensive indexes and annotations have been added, and maps have been drawn especially for this edition.

David Wyatt is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University, and Aroonrut Wichienkeeo teaches at Chiang Mai Rajabhat Insitute.

This volume brings together Siburapha's most highly acclaimed novel, Behind the Painting, with three short stories highlighting the plight of the underclass: Those Kind of People, Lend Us a Hand, and The Awakening.

Behind the Painting is the story of a Thai student studying in Japan who becomes infatuated with an older Thai woman. The novel reflects postwar Thai society in the vanity of the aristocracy and the pragmatism of the new elite; in the social more of concealing one's true feelings; and in the restricted existence of unmarried women and the resulting pressure to marry, whatever the circumstance. Paralleling these Thai cultural themes are the universal themes of the fear of aging and the vagaries of love.

Siburapha (Kulap Saipradit, 1905-1974) has enjoyed a checkered reputation in the Thai literary world. A popular and accomplished writer of romantic novels in the late 1920s, his later work tackled themes of social injustice and inequality. Imprisoned from 1952 to 1957, Siburapha subsequently sought asylum in China, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Gambling, prostitution, drugs, arms trading, oil smuggling, and trafficking in people--these six illegal businesses are large and getting larger in Thailand. They distort the economy and victimize people. They are increasingly linked together through networks of protection and organized crime. They help to fund Thailand's corrosive money politics and to sustain corruption in the police. The authors argue that control of the illegal economy, especially through reform of the police, is vital for the development of a modern economy and functioning democracy.

This volume presents the most comprehensive collection of research on Hmong culture and life in Asia yet to be published. It compliments the abundant material on the Hmong diaspora by focusing instead on the Hmong in their Asian homeland. The contributors are scholars from a number of different backgrounds with a deep knowledge of Hmong society and culture, including several Hmong. The first group of essays addresses the fabric of Hmong culture by considering issues of history, language, and identity among the Hmong/Miao from Laos to China. The second part introduces the challenges faced by the Hmong in contemporary Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.

In the early 1990s, Thaksin Shinawatra came from nowhere to become a multi-billionaire in just four years.

In 2001, he was elected prime minister on a single-minded promise to accelerate Thailand to first-world status through unrestrained capitalist growth. In 2009, over video link from exile in Dubai, he urged thousands of red-shirted supporters to revolution, provoking days of street fighting and the biggest-ever domestic operation by the Thai army.

Thaksin's tenure gave new meaning to the role of prime minister and transformed Thai politics. It is an extraordinary story involving four landslide elections, a military coup, a demonstration lasting half a year, the popular mobilization of people in color-coded street armies, the occupation of Bangkok's international airport, assassination plots, and the flight of Asian leaders from a regional meeting by helicopter.

The first edition of this book was published in 2004, and the original chapters remain unchanged. In the expanded second edition, four new chapters and a conclusion trace in detail the protracted story of Thaksin's downfall.

The Shan are the largest of the many national ethnic groups residing in the Union of Myanmar. After migrating from their early home in the Hwangho-Yangtze region of China, they settled in the eastern part of today's Myanmar, primarily in the Shan Plateau, around the first century AD. The Shan dominated the political stage for a few centuries, founding three historically important dynasties in the heartland of Myanmar at Pinya, Sagaing, and Inwa. Shan history then merges with that of Myanmar until after World War II and Myanmar's independence from the British, when the Shan initiated efforts to establish an autonomous state.

Sai Aung Tun deftly traces the cultural and political history of the Shan people from their origins, to Myanmar independence, and up to the constitutional crisis of 1962. His work highlights particularly the political affairs of the Shan state from 1946 to 1962. He details the Second Pang Long Conference of 1947, which brought about the historic agreement of all the nationalities of Myanmar to work together for independence. He examines the significant role played by the Shan people in the debate on whether Myanmar should adopt a federal system of administration, and their efforts to draft a new constitution. He concludes with an account of the military coup of 1962, which effectively sabotaged the constitutional reform process, a stalemate that still persists today. Unique among Shan histories is the in-depth analysis of the Kuomintang incursion into the Shan States in the early 1950s, with its political, military, and economic consequences.

Sai Aung Tun has amassed a substantial amount of primary materials in the text proper, including verbatim excerpts from conference interviews and speeches, as well as a rich collection of official documents, minutes, and reports in the appendixes. The historical critique of existing constitutional weaknesses will be of interest to those who advocate the drafting of a new constitution in Myanmar. The pleas for unity and goodwill among the ethnic groups, made by various leaders nearly half a century ago, will resonate with readers today. This comprehensive reference work will be an invaluable resource for all Shan scholars and Myanmar observers, and an excellent addition to any reference collection on Southeast Asia.

This fascinating study explores how face functions as social capital for leaders in Thai society. It examines the anatomy of Thai face, ways to gain, lose, and maintain face, patron-client dynamics, and the sources and paradigms of power. Ethnographic research gives voice to Thai leaders as they describe face behaviors and the flow of power in their society. The author compellingly reveals an indigenous but little-used pathway to virtuous leadership that empowers both leaders and followers, to the benefit of all.

Written with academic rigor in a popular style, the book presents insights that are crucial to understanding and building strategic relationships in Thai society.

Mediums, Monks, and Amulets is a sophisticated yet accessible study of the state of popular Buddhist beliefs as they are practiced in Thailand today. Using a combination of focused case studies and analysis, Pattana Kitiarsa explores the nature and evolution of popular Buddhism over the past three decades by focusing on those individuals who practice, popularize, and profit from it.

The case studies profiled include prominent spirit mediums and magic monks, the lottery fever surrounding the posthumous cult of folk singer Phumphuang Duangchan, the Chatukham-Rammathep amulet craze, and the cult of wealth attributed to preeminent monk Luang Pho Khun. It also explores the history of both popular and official opinion surrounding supernatural Buddhism, and its clashes with the rationalist, modernizing policies of Thailand's monarchy and government.

Mediums, Monks, and Amulets contests the viewpoint that supernatural elements within popular Buddhism are a symptom of the decline of the religion. Instead, it argues that this hybridity between traditional Buddhist beliefs and elements from other religions is in fact indicative of the health and wealth of Buddhism as it negotiates large-scale commercialization and global modernity.

Aung San, the architect of Burma's freedom, was one of the most important political figures in the history of Burma's struggle for independence. Beginning as a student leader and activist in the 1930s, Aung San went on to assume prominent leadership positions in Burma's nationalist movement. At the beginning of World War II, he organized a clandestine trip to Japan in search of funds and military training in order to fight against British imperialism, but his close-knit group Thirty Comrades found it necessary to resist not only the British, but also the Japanese. In the postwar years, Aung San became Burma's chief negotiator for independence from Britain, focusing much of his energy on promoting cooperation and unity among Burma's many ethnic groups. Aung San's tragic assassination in 1947 at the age of 32 denied him the privilege of seeing his country claim the freedom and unity to which he had dedicated his life.

This well-researched and readable history sets the life of Aung San squarely in the context of Burma's historic struggle for freedom. Photographs and texts of documents written by Aung San enliven the account.

From abhayamadra through zoomorphic, this is an essential dictionary for anyone stepping into the fascinating world of South and Southeast Asian art. Now with over 1,300 entries and 112 line illustrations, this revised and expanded edition makes a handy reference for travelers and residents, students, museum goers, and general readers. Explanations are succinct and easy to understand. Entries range from terms encountered in South and Southeast Asian history, religion, mythology, and literature, to those specific to art and architecture. Words are drawn from the diverse religious traditions of the region, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, and Taoism, and from the countries of the region, including Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.