Showing titles in Southeast Asia

On April 30, 1975, the Communist capture of the city of Saigon brought an end to more than 20 years of war in Vietnam. The end of the war reunified a divided nation—and changed the course of global politics, military strategy, and international relations for decades to come. In the six lectures of The Fall of Saigon: The Vietnam War 50 Years in Review, historian Edward G. Lengel takes you back to the final years of the long and complex conflict that ravaged the small Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam and bled disastrously into surrounding countries, altering the region forever.

A haunting and beautiful memoir from a Cambodian refugee who lost her country and her family during Pol Pot's genocide in the 1970s but who finds hope by reclaiming the recipes she tasted in her mother's kitchen. Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2...

While most historians of the Vietnam War focus on the origins of US involvement and the Americanization of the conflict, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen examines the international context in which North Vietnamese leaders pursued the war and American intervention ended. This riveting narrative takes the listener 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, and from the peace negotiations in Paris to high-level meetings in Beijing and Moscow.

Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody - it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's protégé and the political leader of India, believed that Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand.

Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child." In a mesmerizing story, Chanrithy Him vividly recounts her trek through the hell of the "killing fields." She gives us a child's-eye view of a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps for both adults and children are the norm and modern technology no longer exists. Death becomes a companion in the camps, along with illness. 

Struggling to reassert control over their Indochinese colonies after World War II, the French established a huge air-land base in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. But when the opposing Vietnamese People's Army (VPA) began massing its forces against the base in late 1953, French commanders seized the opportunity to draw their elusive enemy into a decisive set-piece battle. Defending a series of fortified positions which were reliant upon a single airstrip for reinforcement and resupply, the French troops quickly discovered that they had underestimated their enemy.

On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army.

Brought to you by Penguin. Michael Palin’s latest adventure sees him exploring one of the most fascinatingly complex and contradictory countries on earth: the Philippines. It’s a popular tourist destination, but also a place of extreme poverty for many. It’s a nation where religious...

Brought to you by Penguin. In the overwhelming chaos across Asia at the end of the Second World War, one relatively minor issue was the future of the Japanese colony of Taiwan, a large island some one hundred miles off the coast of Fujian. Handed to the Kuomintang-ruled Republic of China, in...

As a child, Robert Howard was taught by his Granny Callie to always face his threats head-on. Some thirty years later, he emerged from the Vietnam War as America’s most decorated Green Beret. For the first time, Robert Howard’s story is being told in full. Respected military historian...

TIME’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Patricia Evangelista’s searing account is not only the definitive chronicle of a reign of terror in the Philippines, but a warning to the rest of the world about the true dangers of...

During the Khmer Rouge's four-year rule of terror, two million people, or one in every four, Cambodians, died. In describing one family's decades-long quest to learn their husband's and father's fate and the war crimes trial of Comrade Duch (pronounced 'Doyk'), who ran the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, When the Clouds Fell from the Sky illuminates the tragedy of a nation. 

"The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of...

The Philippines is a nation forged in the crucible of colonial encounters. For more than three centuries, Spain imposed its rule over the islands, binding them to an empire of faith and monarchy. Then, in the late nineteenth century, the United States arrived, declaring its own brand of democracy, education, and modernisation. Faith, Flag, and Freedom tells the sweeping story of how Spanish Catholicism and American democracy came together—sometimes violently, sometimes harmoniously—to create the Philippines of today.

Between 1824 and 1885 Britain and Burma fought in three deadly struggles. The first was the longest and most expensive war in British Indian history, the second was criticized at the time as being caused by gunboat diplomacy, and the third led to the removal of Burma's Konbaung dynasty and the incorporation of Burma into the British Raj. These wars were fraught with military blunders and incompetence.

When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence? We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence. But across South and Southeast Asia today, the robe is being turned into a weapon as radical monks and nationalist movements unleash hatred and...

India is the forgotten heart of the ancient world. William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India’s oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the culture and technology of not only its ancient world, but of the world as we know it today.

Over two centuries have passed since his death on 4 May 1799, yet Tipu Sultan’s contested legacy continues to perplex India and her contemporary politics. A fascinating and enigmatic figure in India’s military past, he remains a modern historian’s biggest puzzle as he simultaneously means...

In late 1953, the seventh year of France's war against the Viet Minh insurgency in its colony of Vietnam, the C-in-C, General Navarre, was encouraged to plant an 'air-ground base' in the Thai Highlands at Dien Bien Phu, to distract General Giap's Vietnamese People's Army from both Annam and the French northern heartland in the Red River Delta, and to protect the Laotian border. Elite French paratroopers captured Dien Bien Phu, which was reinforced between December 1953 and February 1954 with infantry and artillery, a squadron of tanks and one of fighter-bombers, to a strength of 10,000 men.

A Brief History of Thailand offers an engaging look at the country's last 250 years - from coups and violent massacres to the invention of Pad Thai in the 1930s. Listeners will learn the vibrant story of Thailand's emergence as a prosperous Buddhist state, its transformation from traditional kingdom to democratic constitutional monarchy, and its subsequent rise to prominence in Southeast Asian affairs. Thailand's dramatic history spans centuries of conflict, and this book recounts many of these fascinating episodes