Asia Books

I really enjoyed Mukulika Banerjee's look into the beautiful but often complicated world of the sari. It provides a great deal of information on regional customs. I was disappointed that the book did not contian more photos.

Mukulika Bannerjee's book, while easily accessible to Westerners with little to no knowledge of Indian clothing customs, also goes in-depth about the many levels of nuance attached to a deceptively simple 6-yard piece of unsewn cloth. She delineates cultural sentiments about what colors and styles are appropriate for unmarried girls, the new bride, middle-aged mothers, and widows. Sections include explanations of the many fabric styles, from ethnic handloom cottons and silks to garish polyester synthetics, along with discussions on what sort of woman is likely to wear each, and for what occasion. Fascinating real-life vignettes feature all sorts of sari wearers, from Hindu to Muslim and from the poorest villager to Bollywood stars and political leaders like Indira Gandhi. The many stunning color photographs make this book a real delight to the eyes as well as a great source of information on a topic rarely covered in the West.

I have had a deep interest in Indian and Pakistani dress for four or five years. I own and wear several saris and shalwar kamiz, but didn't know much about their history or the nuances of dress; this book changed that for me. I was looking for a well illustrated coffee table book, but got that and much more! I could barely put it down from the moment it was delivered. Although there is a lot of detail, it is written in a way that is interesting and easy to read. I highly reccomend it!

I own about 450 books on India and Indian culture, so when I say this is one of my 2-3 favorite books on India (the other probably being Meeting God by Stephen Huyler), it truly says something about this book.

The Sari is beautiful to look at, and fascinating to read. It draws us into women's lives in a way that is enlightening, personal, and does not play to Western preconceptions.

A cross between social antropology and coffee-table book, this book appeals on many levels. It has a ring of truth, drawn from hundreds of interviews with Indian women about their lives and their attitude towards the clothes they wear. It sets these individual attitudes squarely in the cultural milieu in which they belong.

I hope that it gets the wide readership it deserves.

Scars and Stripes is the emotional story of Eugene McDaniel and his seven year emotional rollercoaster in Vietnamese prisoner of war camps. McDaniels served in the Navy during the Vietnam War (965-1972), was shot down while flying an A6A jet on May 19, 1967, crushed two vertebrates after falling forty feet out of a tree (p. 25), captured by compassionless Vietnamese (p. 35), imprisoned, tortured and finally released seven years later on March 4, 1973. The ful range of emotions shine through this book and I shall write a review by focusing on the emotions.

LOVE was felt by McDaniel and his family after his release from the Hanoi Hilton; "All the black hours [in prison]... were gone and we had the sweet reality of faith rewarded, of enduring love fulfilled" (p. 170). His DESIRE was to forgive "Spot", his jailor/torturer; "Looking at him... I felt only a desire to share with him the innter, deeper secrets of God and His never-ending care" (p. 167). And JOY filled the soul of McDaniel when he entered his warm house after leaving the cold prison in 1973; "When I walked into the house with my family... I suddenly was too overwhelmed to absorb it" (p. 170).

His HATRED for the Vietnamese guards was dissolved by prayers; "I had once hated them for what they were doing to me in torture... yet I felt the need to pray for them" (p. 132). DISGUST was felt daily in the camp since the bodily injuries were gross; "My eardrum had ruptured when they struck me across the head with my shoe and it too was oozing blood" (p. 124). SADNESS was always present in camp for the guards were regularly cruel; "Each time I would drop my arms after hours of holding them up, they would beat me around the shoulders with a bamboo stick" (p. 109).

HOPE came to McDaniel one day when, "at the height of my three-day torture, I heard church bells coming from somwhere in downtown Hanoi... It had given me hope" (p. 120). DESPAIR filled the camps since the guards could care less about the American prisoners; "One of them told me, 'I am here to give you rations and bury you when you die'" (p. 49).

There was plenty to FEAR at the Hanoi Hilton; the guards "would take a dog and torture it to death for the sheer pleasure of inflicting pain. It got to us, because we did not know how far that streak in them would carry over to us in the torture room" (p. 54). COURAGE was demanded of McDaniel every day;"I felt that Christ was able to do more in methan if I had counted only on my strength and courage" (p. 172). Finally, the reader cannot help but become ANGRY due to the inconsistencies and unreasonableness of the Vietnamese guards; "The guards kept inflicting wounds- but at the same time they made sure I had medicine so I would not die" (p. 131).

Understanding the story of McDaniel and the full range of emotions triggered by his traumatic prison experience will possibly bring a person to an appreciation of his own emotional life, of the brave military men and women and of the federal republic of the USA.

Scars and Stripes by American idol Red McDaniel paints a vivid picture of his life's greatest struggle as a POW in the Vietnam conflict after his plane was shot down.
Scars and Stripes written by Red himself puts you in a world that only he could describe. The book is interesting and factual filled with many tragedies and accomplishments to keep you reading.
As a reader I could only find one minor fault. Towards the middle of the book when Red has been held prisoner for his second year, the description becomes dragged out. The action slows down a little too much. I say this not in the least to discourage you from reading. I would advise anyone who likes biographies or stories about true survival to read either rent or buy it.
Red McDaniel gives descriptions and accounts anyone would like to hear and is altogether a good read.

Wonderfull book! It tells the story of my friend "Red" McDaniel of him being in the infamous HANOI HILTON were he was beaten severely. In the book, he tells how he got through those years of pure Hell with the help of God. If you are religous, POW-MIA reader, or someone who just likes a good book, I recommend that you read this book, it will truely move you.

The story of Eugene "Red" McDaniel is not only about a prisoner of war in Vietnam, it is the story of a hero who defied the odds and overcame extreme adversity.

Eugene McDaniel was shot down in 1967 and spent 5 years in captivity in North Vietnam's Hanoi Hilton, Zoo, and Zoo Annex prison compounds. While imprisoned, he made very aggressive strides to keep secret communications going between the prisoners even though such communicating was prohibited. In continued defiance of his captors, he paid a dear price.

McDaniel had the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most viciously tortured prisoners of the Vietnam war. Methods used on him were sadistic and barbaric and leaves you wondering how his jailors could possible treat another human being in this manner.

In the most trying of times, when all hope was lost and despair was complete, McDaniel turned to faith and prayer in God and was lifted up from the depths he was in. McDaniel was a constant source of optimism and strength for his fellow prisoners during confinement.

This book, outstanding in its message of courage, perseverance, and inspiration, will leave you knowing that no matter how difficult things can become, faith in God will always see you through.

A magnificent book from start to finish and definitely recommended to everyone.

The Son Tay POW raid was one of the most daring and adventurous events in the Vietnam War, and sitting in the cockpit of the lead aircraft made Bill Guenon eminently qualified to tell the story as it really happened. The book is well written and filled with details, some heretofore unknown. But there is more. The sensitive account of his return to Son Tay years later as a tourist provides a poignant counterpoint to the story. Secret and Dangerous: Night of the Son Tay POW Raid
is a must read for history buffs and those interested in the Vietnam War Era.

William Guenon's firsthand account of the Son Tay Prison Camp raid deep into North Viet Nam is a book you'll want to read in one sitting and then refer to again many times. His good sense of humor lightens the bittersweet scenes both of the rescue attempt itself and of the nostalgic revisit to Hanoi 24 years later. There is a lot of historical detail on these pages. The saga reminded me of several accounts of the liberation of Los Banos prison camp in southern Luzon in February of 1945, and of the similar rescue of thousands of civilians from the large Santo Tomas prison camp in Manila that same month. Wetmore's *Beyond Pearl Harbor* is a great account of the Santo Tomas experience. Guenon's and Wetmore's books, and one by Wiley (*One Hundred Candles*) are masterful historical records of relatively little known incidents that history buffs may want to own.

I have met the author. I have read the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Special Operations and POW matters. This book is an excellent complementry reading to "THE RAID", by Benjamin Schemmer. Son Tay was a technical success, but due to troubles with intellegence compartmentization, it was a practical failure. This book is by a brave man who went and did. It is written on behalf of other brave men who went and did. These were smart and dedicated men of corrage. The book contains many rare photos and drawings. It includes a section for that could be called back to SON TAY. My hat is of to the brave men of The Secret and Dangerous Raid.

It was great to see another book on the Son Tay Raid to complement the other excellent book, "The Raid" by Ben Schemmer. However, "Secret and Dangerous" is the first and only book written by someone who actually went on the raid. I have been reading military books for over 25 years and have a great interest in the Son Tay Raid. Being a commercial pilot myself, it was a real eye opener to read about this night, low level, marginal weather flight over enemy territory. It was very interesting to read about the author's mission both in 1970 to the Son Tay prison and to read about his return trip to the same POW camp in the 1990's. If you have an interest in reading about the military or just a great aviation true story, "Secret and Dangerous" will be a great addition to your bookshelf.

The author worked from 1948 to 1985 in India's Foreign Service. He uses primary sources in this excellent book to show how from 1906 to 1947 the British state allied with Islamists to defeat India's majority-supported Congress Party.

The Aga Khan and some Bengal landlords founded the Muslim League in 1906 and at once petitioned Viceroy Minto to introduce separate Muslim electorates, a sure way to split a country. Lord and Lady Minto immediately welcomed this: she wrote that it would mean "Nothing less than the pulling back of 62 million people from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition."

Churchill too played the Muslim card, lying that the real problem lay in Hindu-Muslim differences about India's future and not in Britain's rulers' unwillingness to accept Indian independence. Viceroy Linlithgow forged an alliance with Jinnah's Muslim League Party. Linlithgow's successor Lord Wavell produced the 1946 blueprint giving the strategic prize of North-West India to Pakistan.

Jinnah called a `Direct Action Day' for 16 August 1946. The British governor of Bengal knew of the League's intention, yet the British brigadier in charge of law and order in Calcutta ordered his troops confined to barracks for the day. 5,000 people were killed. Wavell's blueprint was implemented when the British withdrew from India in 1947, even though it was kept secret to avoid any impression of a British hand in the division of India.

Sarila summarises, "Once the British realized that the Indian nationalists who would rule India after its independence would deny them military cooperation under a British Commonwealth defence umbrella, they settled for those willing to do so by using religion for the purpose. Their problem could be solved if Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League Party, would succeed in his plan to detach the northwest of India abutting Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang and establish a separate state there - Pakistan. The proposition was a realizable one as a working relationship had been established between the British authorities in India and Jinnah during the Second World War and he was willing to cooperate with Britain on defence matters if Pakistan was created."

Imperial policy was and is divide and rule - whether setting Muslim against Hindu in India, Bosnian Muslims against Serbs in Yugoslavia, Sunni against Shia across the Middle East, Protestant against Catholic in Ireland, or Scottish against English in Britain. As Sarila notes, "The successful use by the British to fulfil political and strategic objectives in India was replicated by the Americans in building up the Islamic jihadis in Afghanistan for the same purpose, of keeping the Soviets at bay."

An interesting and detailed analysis based on historical documents that sheds light on the british machinations to encourage, even engineer the partition. lots of other fascinating facts and details are brought to life as well.

The Partition of India is one of the great un-studied subjects of modern times, especially in light of the great ethnic-cleansing that it caused, it is suprising it is ignored and its refugees forgotten. This book however is not about these crimes but about the politics and also the prejudices that brought about partition. It mostly focuses on the British decision to assist Ali Jinnah and his attempts to form a Muslim state. The British had long supported Muslims in India, both as civil servants and administratively, allowing them to keep Shariah law while suppressing Hindu traditions.

As the Great Game ended in 1905 and world politics changed the British continued to cultivate loyal Muslims in India and used them to split India, eventually using them to create Pakistan, and using Pakistan against Soviet Russia, which would have reverberations in the 1980s and even today.

This is a very interesting and new point of view. Few authors have tackled the subject of British pro-Islamic politics in their colonies and this is an important contribution.

Seth J. Frantzman

This book is a significant contribution to the understanding of the fateful events surrounding the independence and partition of India and the players involved. The book presents the events in a cogent manner with insightful analyses into the events and personalities. It is a must read for any student of Indian history and politics since it gives insight into the situations affecting the national security and political decisions made even today. We all have heard so much about the "Divide and rule" policy of English. The reader is able to witness that policy in action in this book.

Key features that one learns from this book are: i) the British determination to hold on to India as long as possible, and in the event that this becomes impossible, secure the northwestern portion of India to thwart any real or imagined Russian adventures, ii) The naivety of Indian National Congress leaders, especially Nehru, about the survival of an independent India in a predatory world, iii) the aging of Gandhi and weakening of his faculties and judgment in dealing with the changing political environment, iv) Even though Mountbatten contributed to bringing the princely states into the Union he also did double cross Nehru in dealing with Kashmir, and v) Hunger for power at any cost on the part of Jinnah who died regretting what he had done with his life.

The role that President Roosevelt played in pushing Churchill towards Indian independence and the US gesture to be the first country to send an ambassador to India is neither appreciated nor known among the India's polity nor did the historians pay much attention to the subject. Better management of the relationship with US early on might have paid dividends and the world history could have turned out to be totally different than what we have witnessed.

The author has to be specially commended for his assessment that Indian independence came not because the British had an enlightenment about egalitarianism or human rights but because the empire was economically not tenable any longer, and even more important, the events of the second World War and its conclusion created an environment in India where they could not even count on the loyalty of the Indian army any longer. The "awe" with which the ordinary Indian looked at the Englishman had ended. The bluff that worked for two hundred years stopped working.

For anyone who has lived in Japan, there are way way too many books that attempt to explain away what we witnessed as severe problems via complex cultural blah-blah about the "Japanese exception."

The great value of this book is to explain the corruption and autocratic impulses as the product of a rather straightforward politican machine - there is nothing exceptional that offers anything of intrinsic value beyond understanding it for what it was: just a moment in time that a corrupt leader, Tanaka, was able to create a seat for himself at the center of power. As Schlesinger argues, with all that power, the great failure of Tanaka was that he did so little with it in terms of serving the public interest: instead, it just served him and his cronies. As such, now that the machine has been watered down, many needed reforms are far more difficult to implement (and the need for remedies, after decades of neglect, is worse than ever).

This is the product of a truly intelligent and thoughtful journalist. I knew him briefly in Japan, and was always impressed with his clear sightedness and willingness to question anything, in addition to his humor. It is a great pleasure to read this book and recognise the original mind that I knew.

Warmly recommended.

Concise and well written, it opens up postwar Japanese politics. Incredulous happenings! Maybe we should send some of our congressmen to Japan to check this out.-- Short shrift is given, however, to the all-pervading involvement with, and use of, the criminal organisations where the police seem powerless. Also, it should have photographs of the main actors to make it more three-dimensional.

This is a far better book than the more theoretical approach by Karel van Wolferen in 'The Enigma of Japanese Power'.
After reading this book there is no enigma anymore.

Jacob M. Schlesinger reveals extremely clearly how the Japanese system worked and who pulled the strings. He shows that Japanese politics in the last half of the 20th century was firmly controlled by four men, with Kakuei Tanaka as the most predominant tycoon.

Tanaka's tactics were very simple: use his home base as a platform for his political career by lavishy spending state money in his election district and by buying votes; use his financial clout to control the Japanese majority party; become still richer by corrupting the state bureaucracy, bid-rigging (200 % and more margin) and briberies (by private companies).

In fact, the author shows clearly that the whole system was controlled by a corrupt oligachy.
The men in power were not afraid of racket type interventions. One example: the ruling government proposed stiff taxes on automobiles. After the automobile industry paid heavy contributions to the party in charge, the bill was watered down.

This book is an exemplary analysis of a corrupt political system. Not to be missed.

Why has Japan changed its prime ministers with such frequency through much of the post-war period? Why did those prime ministers seem powerless to affect real change to the political system? "Shadow Shoguns" answers these questions by way of a brilliantly told story of the Liberal Democratic Party's most powerful political faction called the "gundan".

The story of the "gundan" - which means "army corps" -- is primarily the story of the man who created and ruled over it for much of the 70s and 80s, Kakuei Tanaka. Jacob Schlesinger spends more than half of "Shadow Shoguns" examining Tanaka's life, including his roots in the construction business, his entry into politics, how he made money work for him in consolidating political power, and finally, his fall from power.

Tanaka was a fascinating figure. In many ways he was a combination of LBJ and Boss Tweed. His appetite for power and money was huge, and his experience in the construction industry gave him the ability to amass both. Coming from one of the poorest prefectures in Japan, he fought hard to bring huge pork barrel construction projects back to his constituents, and they in turn gave him unflinching support even when he was charged with crimes and became a national symbol of corruption.

A scandal removed Tanaka from the prime minister's seat in 1974, but due to his constituents' support, it did not remove him from the parliament. From then until the mid-80s, Tanaka would be the power behind the throne, using money from construction projects to strengthen his faction, and his faction to strengthen his hold over national politics.

What finally removed Tanaka from his position as leader over Japan's most powerful faction was not angry voters, other factions or their political leaders, but his own underlings. Tanaka had attracted some of the most talented politicians in Japan to his faction, and handling those egos was a full-time job. After a stroke in 1985, Tanaka was unable to reassert his power, and three of his protégés (Shin Kanemaru, Noburu Takeshita, and Ichiro Ozawa) wrenched the faction away from him.

The final third of the book focuses on those protégés, their strengthening of the faction, and finally the fall of their machine as Japan's economy began to flounder. As Schlesinger tells it, the success of the faction was always predicated on continued strong economic growth. When the Japanese economy faltered throughout the early 1990s, so did the mechanism by which the "gundan" governed Japan.

This is a book that gives vivid life to a political system and to politicians many people find boring. Schlesinger shows that because Japan's most capable and interesting politicians operated out of the limelight for much of the last three decades, their story is a compelling one as well as the key to understanding the history of the modern Japanese political system.

This book has got all that you need to avoid reinventing the wheel. A must for Sikh history researchers.

This book is specialy interesting and instructive to be read by the sikhs
and those who have allready some knowledge of Sikhism.

I bought this book expecting to read articles with a bigoted, mis-informed view of the Sikh culture and people from an anti-Sikh western viewpoint, or worse, pure ignorance. I was pleasantly surprised by the detailed and fascinating detail on the circumstances of Sikh people and life during the periods covered. I appreciate that there are gaps in coverage, but that adds to the authencity of the accounts and helps you formulate a view in your mind how the Sikh's could've changed from a small band of warriors under Bhanda Singh to the organised armies under Ranjit Singh. What I liked were the commentaries by the narrators who put the writer's circumstances into context before putting the writer's actual account before the reader. This helps the reader appreciate the limitations of the writer's perspective, and appreciate the actual gems of insight where they are to be found. The book also gives a glimpse into the past when it wasn't necessary to be 'man with turban' to be sikh, but there were other ways to be spiritually sikh without donning the appearance of a Khalsa sikh.

Overall, a gr8 read. Now onto Patwant Singh's book...

Well done to the authors and all who supported them in this long overdue project.

Amandeep and Paramjeet have attempted to write this book in an unbiased fashion, and I must say, have succeeded. This is a rare acheivement for authors of history and historians, as the biased historical accounts of the early Europeans in India show.

The accounts (some apparently eye witness) of Banda Bahadur are particulary informative as to the culture, opinions, attitudes and politics of the rulers and the Sikhs in the early eighteenth century.

It's a shame that there is still a gap in mid eighteenth century Sikh history, although there are accounts of this, they are still very limited in content and historians rely heavily on the hearsay of the time.

Maybe a project on the Sikh Misls could be a possibilty, using all known sources!! There is a lot of misinformation about this period and the Sardaars. A comprehensive and historical records based study is much needed!

There is some very interesting information as to the practices of Sikhs which I never knew of before e.g. stirring amrit with a boars tooth, which is very believable if looked at in the context of the problems faced by the Sikhs of the time.

Unsuprisingly, there are comprehensive reports of Ranjit Singhs darbaar.

In all, this is an eye opening, inspiring and educational book.

Harcharan

Got to me in a decent enough time and nothing was wrong with the book so i would say overall pretty good.

This book is a fantastic cultural adventure and should be read by anyone interested in cross-cultural relationships. More than a topographical description of the silk road, it is a gallop though history explaining paths taken by silk to get to Europe. It starts in prehistoric china and ends with the Karakorum highway, synthetizing in twenty chapters the reasons for the often difficult diffusion of luxury products from the Far East. The author, that evidently knows well chinese history and mentality, takes us by hand into the ancient cinese political issues as to foreign commerce, the fundamental role played by Iranians, byzantines and arabs during the Middle Ages up to the wary reciprocal opening of European and Cinese worlds due to brave and curious travelers. So we meet princesses, monks and merchants and get to know their fascinanting stories. One point of force of the book is the meticulous and modern analysis of these travel tales, so we have a critical perspective of what has come down in history and makes up our cultural background. Marco Polo get's revisited and also less well known ancient and modern travelers are cited.
Boulnois loves silk (her detailed description of materials of the old world and how they were made is enlightening)and its history, so she brings us to her country, France, and to the evolution of the silk industry in the XIX and XX century. And this somehow closes the circle of the story of this precious tissue that reached its apogeum in the last century.
The book however is much more than this and carries a great amount of information. It could be described actually as a textbook on the history of silk. It is well written even if not too easy to read, and sometimes it is a little repetitive.
I enjoyed it very much and feel enriched by its reading.

This is a fascinating coverage of a area, region call it what you may. The Silk Road has been part of the adventure stories that we have come across over many years, not knowing much about it; but we have thought that one day we might just get there ourselves.

Purchased with the idea that if I am going to visit this area, and I will in the not too distant future, this is the ideal book to read, savior and be intrigued with the Monks Warriors & Merchants that have gone before us.

If only I could pronounce the names - but then that is another book, another read.

This is the book I wish I had written. I have traveled in most of these countries and studied their history and culture. I was so thrilled to see the information pulled together and the follow-through to show the outcomes of movements and trade goods. Fascinating. Loved it!!

This book is a delight to read. Thai culture comes alive with the Marsden's adept descriptions of daily life in a small village. Full to the brim with beautifully described characters, the book is worth savoring.

Marsden succeeds again with her second novel, Silk Umbrellas. It gently transports us to the world of a rural Thai girl whose artistic sensibilities are emerging even as she struggles with her family's survival issues. The descriptions of how she forms images in her mind, paints the umbrellas, and gains confidence as an artist are sure to appeal to young artists worldwide. The compelling story and details of present-day, rural life in Thailand make this story worthy of classroom study. It would be a cultural eye opener for many American children and is sure to spark discussion. Parents will want the book for home use, too-kids will treasure this inspiring read.

Silk Umbrellas is a revealing commentary on our changing world, for these changes are happening everywhere, not only in Thailand. It is also a tender story of a young girl, glimpsing a future with eyes learning to see reality. I read it in preparation for an upcoming trip to Thailand, and am enriched by it. Only one question for the author: where does the family get the umbrellas? Now I want a sequel: The Umbrella-Makers.

Noi's grandmother is an artist who paints beautiful designs on silk umbrellas and sells them at the market near their rural Thai home. Eleven-year-old Noi also longs to be an artist, and when her grandmother lets Noi add small designs to the umbrella, she seems to have natural talent: "The flit of the butterflies moved into her, then out into the brush, so the paint seemed to lay itself down."

When Noi's family falls on hard times, though, and Noi's older sister Ting is sent to work making radios at the factory, Noi fears that she, too, will be sent to work when she finishes school in just a few months. When Noi sees the stifling environment of the factory, she grows even more desperate to avoid this fate and asks her grandmother to help her learn how to paint. In secret, Noi creates dozens of decorated umbrellas, inspired by the flora, fauna and colors of the landscape. When her grandmother grows ill, will Noi be able to paint umbrellas beautiful enough to help support her family?

Set against the background of preparations for the harvest festival of Loy Krathong, SILK UMBRELLAS is not only the story of the birth of an artist, but also a loving portrayal of Thai nature and culture. Careful readers will notice subtle commentaries on the changing economic conditions in Thailand. Electronics factories replace traditional crafts; Noi's father weaves fishing baskets, not for fishermen but for Western tourists.

SILK UMBRELLAS is a slim novel that can nevertheless be read on several levels. Younger readers will enjoy witnessing Noi's artistic development and learning about Thai customs, and older readers will also grasp the larger cultural commentary in Carolyn Marsden's sensitively written novel.

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In my opinion, the "Eyewitness Guides" are a must reading whenever my wife and I travel to a location we've never been before.
In addition to the usual tourist information they present great background on the history and culture of the area. This particular guide was no exception.
Well worth the money by adding immeasurably to the trip.

I needed a travel guide to help me with my first trip to Singapore. The Eyewitness guides have consistently been the best for me. They contain a good mix of historical information and practical guidance, and the graphics are excellent (I keep my Eyewitness travel guides as souveniers so I can remember all the things I did on my trips and their pictures are usually better than mine). The writing is interesting and informative - not too technical and not too "touristy". For the Singapore edition, the mapping, directions and information were particularly helpful and accurate. Singapore is not a large place but it has a mountain of things to do and see, so it is important to have an accurate guide that breaks things down into specific geographic sections as well as into subject matter. This book does just that. I highly recommend this guide to any traveller heading to Singapore.

Seduced as I am by the highly glossy, supremely compact and wonderfuly illustrated DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, I suppose I am somewhat biased as a reviewer. The combination of succinct text, numerous useful details, spectacular photographs, eyecatching 3-D graphical images, and user-friendly maps make the Eyewitness Travel Guides uniquely useful, distinctive and even collectable. The new Singapore book is no exception to these considerations, so much so, I wish I had it my disposal when I visited there last year, if only for the invaluable details it provides. Now shortly before leaving for Singapore once again, I have recently acquired this book, and it has whetted my appetite, by reminding me of the places, the colors, the smells, the greenery, the heat, and the vibrancy I had already experienced. It has also made it quite clear, exactly how much I missed last time, particularly in terms of wildlife reserves, museums, and galleries. The book contains a brief, but informative overview of the history and multi-cultural nature of this exciting island country. As with other titles in the series, the guide enables the user-traveler to gain maximum benefit from his or her visit, by highlighting THE places to visit, and what to expect from these experiences. If I have any criticisms of this, and indeed with many other Eyewitness Travel Guides, it is a shade small, with tiny text font, and it is a tad too short for my liking. But I guess they have to fit comfortably into your pocket, and, in any case, you cannot have too much of a good thing, otherwise you may just stay at home and gloat over the marvellous pictures.

If you ever go to Singapore, don't forget to bring this book. Even if you have been there many times (I have), you will always find new and interesting sights to visit and new information you didn't know about. What I like most is the detailed map section that covers most of the central city, that is the part you would want to visit as a tourist anyway. The street-by-street pictorial maps are excellent, but not always true to detail. The general index (for looking up things) is very good. However, on the downside, I would have liked to see more budget options in the "where to stay"-chapter. Nevertheless, probably the best guidebook to buy.

I love this book! Teaching children, and adults no less, compassion, imagination and creative thinking is of the utmost importance and the combined pleasure of a fantastic ending is a sure winner. The little drawings are not colorful but so detailed and feeling.

A poor old witch and her cat, Toraji, just want to make some yummy miso soup for their meager supper. The bonito flakes are boiling to make stock. But, wait the cranky pair have a change of heart when they look at the peacefully sleeping clams they have bought for the soup. An unexpected tale of friendship and happy, mundane magic. We like it. The Librarians Sisters, Karen and CJ

Yes, this tale does have a very strong vegan message. As the witch and her cat learn more about the clams and interact with them, they realize that the clams are living beings, too. More than that, they are fast becoming friends. You don't eat friends.

I loved that the witch (and her cat!) grew throughout the story and opened themselves to love and service to others, and became much happier beings for it.

Message books can be kind of preachy, but I really didn't find this one to be overly so. Nowhere does the author explicitly state that eating meat is bad, or even that you should want to help others in order to be a decent human being. Things just unfold naturally in the storyline.

As a vegetarian venturing into veganism myself, though, I love having this resource to begin to talk with my kids about the ethics of food choices. (My children are six and two.)

Singing Shijimi Clams is the tale of a witch, old and without her sparks, who brings home some shijimi clams for her dinner. She's taken aback, right before cooking them, to find find the clams snoring away. "Their shells were opened slightly, and their little bodies moved contentedly." Her cat, Toraji, tries to convince the witch that it's ok to boil up the clams because "(t)hey won't feel anything if you put them in quickly." But she can't do it, and witch and cat end up eating miso soup sans clams.

Eventually, the witch and Toraji start talking with the clams, and the clams cry when they learn that they aren't in the ocean anymore. The witch and Toraji have to undertake a major project to take the clams back to the sea. Along the way, the clams sing! "And every day, as the witch listened to the shijimi clams' sweet voices, she too began to feel happier, and less miserable."

I'm not such a fan of message books, and this one bears a relatively strong vegan message. But Singing Shijimi Clams is a lot of fun. The illustrations are deceptively simple, small black and white sketches rather than full page drawings. They convey the grouchy witch's gradual thawing, as she does something good for the clams. The cat is a riot, starting out callous, but by the end admitting "I will miss them when they go." The drawings of the little clams are priceless, with tiny faces, and lines to show movement and emotion.

This book grew on me. I thought that it was ok on the first read, but by the end of the second read I was quite attached to witch, cat, and clams. Because of the lack of color in the illustrations, and the relatively high text ratio, I think that this book will resonate more with kids on the older end of picture book range.

This book review was originally published on my blog, Jen Robinson's Book Page, on November 12, 2006.