The fact is, some books simply need to exist. Burma: The Cookbook is one of these. Burma is culturally rich and complex in many ways, but perhaps nowhere more than in its extraordinary food culture. It's at the crossroads between the food of the great Indian subcontinent (to its west) and the food of Southeast Asia (to its east), with a dash of Chinese influence (from the north), making it an amazing place in-between. With simple recipes for food that manages to be elegant and earthy at the same time, plus stories of a place and a people that inspired Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, and George Orwell, this may be Duguid's most enchanting cookbook yet. The book features photographs throughout--of the finished dishes, of people, of a hauntingly beautiful land--as well as travel tips, a history of Burma, extensive glossaries, and a bibliography.

Việt Nam is the home of more than fifty ethnic minorities--such as the Cham and Thai--many of which have distinctive clothing and weaving traditions linked to antiquity. The tight-fitting tunic called ao dai, widely recognized as a national symbol, has its roots in the country's 2,000-year history of textiles. Beginning with silk production in the Bronze Age cultures of the Red River, this book covers textiles in Việt Nam--including bark-cloth, kapok and hemp--through the centuries of Chinese rule in the north, a number of independent feudal societies and the brief period of French colonial rule.