Southeast Asia

In 1965, the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the 20th century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the USSR and inspiring copycat terror programs....

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle....

In The Golden Road, revered historian William Dalrymple corrects the record, telling the captivating story of ancient India’s ascent through a swift and breathtaking tour of the ideas and places Indians created. Treks into the depths of cave monasteries illuminate the origins and spread of Buddhism.

A vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart....

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.

Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam....

NYT bestselling author Caroline Alexander provides a breathtaking account of combat and survival in one of the most brutally challenging and rarely examined campaigns of World War II....

A riveting narrative, Dereliction of Duty focuses on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, and other aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Congress, and the American public....

In this comprehensive history, Stanley Karnow demystifies the tragic ordeal of America's war in Vietnam....

The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people....

Celebrated historian of World War II James Holland chronicles the astonishing Allied victory at the Battle of the Admin Box in Burma (now Myanmar), a turning point of the war in the Far East.

Some People Need Killing is a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an investigation into the human impulses to dominate and resist.

In August 1945, a handful of people raised a homemade cotton flag and announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first country to rid itself of colonial rule after WWII.

From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott comes the compelling account of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society.

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.

The 'Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club' was the tongue-in-cheek nickname of the US Seventh Fleet that was stationed off the coast of Vietnam and this book tells the full story of the US Naval air campaign in the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1975....

Discover the magic of the Indonesian island of Bali in this captivating book on its history, from the origins of Bali’s geological formation until modern times. Bali is known as “the Island of the Gods”, with its tens of thousands of temples and shrines....

We Band of Angels is the story of women searching for adventure, caught up in the drama and danger of war.

John Edmund Delezen felt a kinship with the people he was instructed to kill in Vietnam; they were all at the mercy of the land. His memoir begins when he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was sent to Vietnam in March of 1967....

With his parting words "I shall return," General Douglas MacArthur sealed the fate of the last American forces on Bataan. Yet one young Army Captain refused to surrender....

Indonesia is by far the largest nation in Southeast Asia and has the fourth-largest population in the world after the United States. Indonesian history and culture are especially relevant today as the island nation is an emerging power....

An entertaining and thought-provoking portrait of Indonesia: a rich, dynamic, and often maddening nation awash with contradictions....

Discover the fascinating Philippines in this captivating audiobook on its history, from the origins of the archipelago’s first peoples until modern times. The Philippines is possibly the most intriguing nation of maritime Southeast Asia....

No hotel is as inseparably linked to its city than Raffles Hotel, writes Pico Iyer, arguably the world's greatest travel writer alive.

Americans are accustomed to thinking that World War II ended on August 14, 1945, when the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Yet on the mainland of Asia peace was a brief, fretful interlude....