As a one-time resident of Phnom Penh and an authority on Southeast Asia, Milton Osborne provides a colorful account of the troubled history and appealing culture of Cambodia's capital city. Osborne sheds light on Phnom Penh's early history, when first Iberian missionaries and freebooters and then French colonists held Cambodia's fate in their hands. The book examines one of the most intriguing rulers of the twentieth century, King Norodom Sihanouk, who ruled over a city of palaces, Buddhist temples, and transplanted French architecture, an exotic blend that remains to this day. Osborne also describes the terrible civil war, the Khmer Rouge's capture of the city, the defeat of Pol Pot in 1979, and Phnom Penh's slow reemergence as one of the most attractive cities in Southeast Asia.

A penniless American traveller lands a gig as the ragtime pianist of a waterfront saloon and begins a journey filled with drunken sailors, bar fights and late-night chop-suey suppers.

A stunning visual journey through Cambodian culture, history, art, struggle, and modernization. Cambodia has two parallel histories. One is the constant stream of adventurers and diplomats, kings and rebels, archaeologists and artists drawn to the magnificent ruins at Angkor. Another is the formation of a nation through the Cambodian people's fierce struggles with colonialism, war, revolution, famine, and finally, the long road to recovery. This book captures these parallel stories through the eyes of talented photographers who were present to record such events. The images, which include many rare and never-before-published photos, are drawn from archives, national collections, libraries, and private collections. This treasure trove of nearly 500 photographs showcases the work of over 100 photographers--including pioneering female photographers, Cambodian and international photographers, and some who died soon after the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Within these pages, readers will find a fresh perspective on Cambodia. From the early days of French colonialism through the struggle for independence, and emergence into an uneasy peace in the 21st century.

Journalist, storyteller, and ragtime piano player Harry L. Foster is back! From a mugging in a Vietnamese opium den to hopping a freight train down the Malay Peninsula to a waterfront bar in Singapore to a sing-song theater in China, Foster never fails to show the squalid side of life in a glorious adventure to the wild countries of Southeast Asia during the Roaring 1920s.