In this book, besides offering the usual juicy titbits, he looks back not just at our history but also on his life as an historian, this book being written for his 50th birthday. His introduction alone is already worth the price of admission.

Ambeth Ocampo on the inspiration behind this collection of essays: “Chulalongkorn’s elephants are the bronze elephants the King of Siam gave to Singapore and Java as gifts during his travels in 1871. I met the Singapore elephant first as I traced Rizal’s footsteps and found a reference to it in his diary. It was upon meeting next the Jakarta elephant that prompted me to compile this collection of essays that begins and ends with an elephant. More reflective than usual and going beyond Rizal and my 19th-centuray comfort zone, these explorations still carry my trademark irreverent humor.”

Ambeth Ocampo always makes historical figures come alive, blemishes and all, and with his curious eye, make our heroes very human and not the mythic figures that we want to make of them. [He] makes history enjoyable reading while at the same time makes it anchor us to the past and therefore, and hopefully, prepares us for the future.” – F. Sionil Jose, National Artist for Literature

The cause of history writing owes Ambeth Ocampo a great deal. By his extraordinary use of a relatively new genre, he has rescued history from the cold, forbidding halls of academe. He has made of history something amusing, entertaining . . . as immediate as a newspaper headline, as relevant as a rapper’s song.”– Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil

Hindsight is the lowest form of intelligence–except for historians. In this handy collection of Ambeth Ocampo’s “Looking Back” column pieces, the popular historian digs deep and looks back carefully at events, places and important people who make up the country’s history.