Showing titles in Southeast Asia

The defeat of South Vietnam was arguably America's worst foreign policy disaster of the twentieth century. Yet a complete understanding of the endgame—from the January 27, 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords to South Vietnam's surrender on April 30, 1975—has eluded us. Black April addresses that deficit.

This immersive epic reveals the origins of the American empire and the lives of those who promoted it and those who resisted it. In 1898, the United States won an empire, and—many allege—lost its soul. In Splendid Liberators, Joe Jackson offers an epic narrative of the Spanish-American War...

This audiobook covers ancient Southeast Asia, the mid-period, colonialism, World War Two occupation by the Japanese, the aftermath of the war, and the subsequent revolutions. The history of this region is a riveting story full of all manner of plot twists and developments.

A History of the Philippines is a short, dense and temporally expansive book. It starts with the Evolution of the Land 100 million years ago. The writing is predominantly dry, dispassionate and academic. It's full of details, and often presumes an existing familiarity with Philippine history and culture, introducing terms with no definition provided.

In mid-December 1968, after recovering from wounds sustained in a murderous mission, Gary Linderer returned to Phu Bai to complete his tour of duty as a LRP. His job was to find the enemy, observe him, or kill him - all the while behind enemy lines, where success could be as dangerous as discovery.

On the early morning of March 16, 1968, American soldiers from three platoons of Charlie Company entered a group of hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam, located near the Demilitarized Zone and known as "Pinkville" because of the high level of Vietcong infiltration. The soldiers, many still teenagers who had been in the country for three months, were on a "search and destroy" mission. Three hours after the GIs entered the hamlets, more than 500 unarmed villagers lay dead, killed in cold blood.

Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong.

Over the last decade, the center of world power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia. With oil reserves of several billion barrels, an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and several centuries' worth of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea in particular is a simmering pot of potential conflict. The underreported military buildup in the area where the Western Pacific meets the Indian Ocean means that it will likely be a hinge point for global war and peace for the foreseeable future.

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...

In February 1966, U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over "neutral Laos". He crashed deep in territory controlled by North Vietnamese army regulars and the communist Pathet Lao, who would eventually capture him and hold him prisoner in a fortified jungle prisoner-of-war camp.

George MacDonald Fraser—beloved for his series of Flashman historical novels—offers an action-packed memoir of his experiences in Burma during World War II. Fraser was only 19 when he arrived there in the war’s final year, and he offers a first-hand glimpse at the camaraderie, danger...

For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history. The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original book.

In this classic account of the French war in Indochina, Bernard B. Fall vividly captures the sights, sounds, and smells of the savage eight-year conflict in the jungles and mountains of Southeast Asia from 1946 to 1954. The French fought well to the last, but even with the lethal advantages of airpower, they could not stave off the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists, who countered with a hit-and-run campaign of ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. Defeat came at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and opening another tragic chapter in Vietnam's history.

A gripping account of ordinary men with extraordinary courage and heroism who had one last chance to make good—and one helluva war zone to do it in. The new commander of the Company E, 52d Infantry LRRPs, Capt. George Paccerelli, was tough, but the men’s new AO was brutal. It was bad enough...

Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House.

As Allied ships prepared for the invasion of the Philippine island of Leyte, every available warship, submarine, and airplane was placed on alert while Japanese admiral Kurita Takeo stalked Admiral William F. Halsey's unwitting American armada. It was the beginning of the epic Battle of Leyte Gulf - the greatest naval battle in history.

In 1965, Singapore's GDP per capita was on a par with Jordan. Now it has outstripped Japan. After the Second World War and a sudden rupture with newly formed Malaysia, Singapore found itself independent—and facing a crisis. It took the bloody-minded determination and vision of Lee Kuan Yew, its founding premier, to take a small island of diverse ethnic groups with a fragile economy and hostile neighbors and meld it into Asia's first globalized city.

Victory at Saipan was the key that opened the door to the soft underbelly of the Japanese Empire. Yet because the Japanese were aware of this vulnerability, they were willing to throw everything they had against the ever-encroaching American forces and fight to the death to defend this island.

In this stirring memoir, a preeminent politician and diplomat traces the transformation of the Republic of Singapore from a poor colony into an Asian powerhouse.

Up Close with Lee Kuan Yew gathers some of the vivid memories of 37 people who have worked or interacted closely with Lee Kuan Yew in some way or other, from when he was at Raffles College in 1941 right up to his demise in 2015. Among these are his 13 Principal Private Secretaries and Special Assistants who lived and breathed Mr Lee for a few years each, and Mdm Yeong Yoon Ying, his Press Secretary of over 20 years.