"Much more than a blood-and-guts thriller...An insightful, moving, and sensitive look at what the war did to a country, its people, and its enemies." - Orlando Sentinel Former army homicide investigator Paul Brenner has just gotten used to the early retirement forced on him after the disastrous end of his last case when his old commanding officer asks him to return for one final mission: investigate a murder that took place in wartime Vietnam thirty years before. Brenner reluctantly accepts out of curiosity and loyalty...and maybe a touch of boredom. He won't be bored for long. Back in Vietnam, Brenner meets expatriate Susan Weber, a woman as exotic, sensual, and dangerous as the nation of her voluntary exile. Brenner is plunged into a world of corruption, lethal double cross, and haunted memories-as he's suddenly thrust back into a war that neither he nor his country ever really stopped fighting.

Ray likes to think of himself as a global nomad, belonging everywhere in general and nowhere in particular. Now in his thirties, he jumps at the opportunity to take a six-month sabbatical offered by his company. But as he walks to the airport gate, Ray feels a bit of trepidation; hell be giving up his normal lifefriends, family, sports, hobbies, and his usual daily life while he backpacks for the coming half-year. From Thailand to Cambodia and Vietnam, Ray explores cultures, sees breathtaking sights, and savours the cuisine of his many stops. He makes new friends and takes time to examine his life as a single man. Its a discovery of places and parts that Ray has forgotten existed while he toiled away in the corporate rat race. Although he begins his trip without any ambition of finding himself or the like; he is increasingly intrigued by the question of what he wants from the rest of his life. Will he find love and a lifestyle that makes him happy?

Saigon, November, 1978. Under the cover of darkness a desperate family leaves home and friends, hoping to escape the harsh regime of Communist Vietnam. Their goal is to reunite with the four oldest children sent ahead to the United States, but first they must evade ruthless communist patrols. Eleven-year-old Nam Moi is confused, afraid and now homeless. Her future seems bleak and devoid of hope. The risks are great, but it was not the first time her family had taken risks. Long ago, her Ung ancestors had migrated from China to northern Vietnam. When the country was partitioned in 1954, they moved again to South Vietnam. Nam Moi, or "little girl from the South", was born in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Her family survived the fighting, but living under Communist rule was very hard. After years of planning and debating, Nam Moi's father made the bold decision to escape, in hope of finding a better life for his children somewhere else. Nam Moi had been taught that sometimes gambles must be taken for a better life. But would this huge gamble bring freedom or cost them all their lives?Nam Moi: A Young Girl's Story of Her Family's Escape from Vietnam is a true story of triumph over repression, danger and hardship. Escaping from Vietnam meant traveling on a rusty cargo ship in the South China Sea for months, barely hanging onto life. Nam Moi's father paid precious gold for the chance to escape the country, but the price the family paid to survive was much higher than gold. They had to start their lives all over again.

The present collection of articles grew out of a workshop on Vietnamese linguistics in 2009 at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. To our knowledge, no workshop with a comparable scope has been held outside of Vietnam for the past 20 years, or even longer. Given the important typological status of Vietnamese as a paradigm case of an isolating language, the volume covers the most relevant fields in linguistics: syntax, semantics, phonology, and the lexicon. A guiding principle in assembling the chapters for this volume has been to take an inclusive stance as far as the commitment to different frameworks and research methodologies is concerned. All the contributors are proponents of recent developments in their individual areas of specialization. The editors have taken special care to cater for a readership which should be as broad as possible. This means that each contribution is self-contained and does not presuppose any knowledge of Vietnamese. The volume is recommended to general linguistis, comparative linguists, typologists and to researchers specializing in languages of East and South East Asia.

Despite the historical importance of the Vietnam War, we know very little about what the Vietnamese people thought and felt prior to the conflict. Americans have tended to treat Vietnam as an extension of their own hopes and fears, successes and failures, rather than addressing the Vietnamese record. In this volume, David Marr offers the first serious intellectual history of Vietnam, focusing on the period just prior to full-scale revolutionary upheaval and protracted military conflict. He argues that changes in political and social consciousness between 1920 and 1945 were a necessary precondition to the mass mobilization and people's war strategies employed subsequently against the French and the Americans. Thus he rejects the prevailing notion that Vietnamese success was primarily due to communist techniques of organization. However, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial goes beyond simply accounting for anyone's victory or defeat to an informed description of intellectual currents in general. Replying for his information on a previously ignored corpus of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and leaflets, the author isolates eight issues of central concern to twentieth-century Vietnamese. The new intelligentsia—indubitably the product of a peculiar French colonial milieu, yet never divorced from the Vietnamese past and always looking to a brilliant Vietnamese future—spearheaded every debate beginning ini 1925. After 1945, Vietnamese intellectuals either placed themselves under ruthless battlefield discipline or withdrew to private meditation. David Marr suggests that the new problems facing Vietnamese today make both of these approaches anachronistic. Whether the Vietnam Communist Party will allow citizens to subject received wisdom to critical debate, to formulate new explanations of reality, to test those explanations in practice, is the essential question lingering at the end of this study.

Dr. Christian Phuoc-lanh Phan is a 1.5Gen Vietnamese American. His role is as a bridge among Vietnamese American generations. He received a BS degree in 2000, M.Div in 2002, and Ed.D in 2009. He has served as a pastor, professor, leader of religious organizations, and leader of community groups. Given his long-term involvement with the Vietnamese American community, the book offers great values and knowledge about Vietnamese people in the United States. His dream is to establish a Christian University in Vietnam. His wife, Ai, two sons, Christian Jr. and Theodore, and him are living in Renton Highlands, Washington.

“Southeast Asian Affairs, first published in 1974, continues today to be required reading for not only scholars but the general public interested in in-depth analysis of critical cultural, economic and political issues in Southeast Asia. In this annual review of the region, renowned academics provide comprehensive and stimulating commentary that furthers understanding of not only the region’s dynamism but also of its tensions and conflicts. It is a must read.” – Suchit Bunbongkarn, Emeritus Professor, Chulalongkorn University “Now in its forty-sixth edition, Southeast Asian Affairs offers an indispensable guide to this fascinating region. Lively, analytical, authoritative, and accessible, there is nothing comparable in quality or range to this series. It is a must read for academics, government officials, the business community, the media, and anybody with an interest in contemporary Southeast Asia. Drawing on its unparalleled network of researchers and commentators, ISEAS is to be congratulated for producing this major contribution to our understanding of this diverse and fast-changing region, to a consistently high standard and in a timely manner.” – Hal Hill, H.W. Arndt Professor of Southeast Asian Economies, Australian National University