South China Sea Rats follows an army forensic anthropologist and a team of soldiers on a deployment into Vietnam to recover the remains of a missing pilot from 1965. This is the first such mission for Dr. Barbara Doc Crittendon. There is much to learn and experience. The soldiers and officers teach her important survival techniques, such as high-frequency radio communication and helicopter egress techniques. She in turn explains archaeological excavation methods, how to set up a proper grid square, and how to succeed in the endurance test of constant screening. Although she seemingly comes from a different world, the military team members and Doc Crittendon find a shared value in humorif one can laugh at oneself and his or her predicament. The drudgery of routine transforms this excursion into a lively adventure of creative wit and emotional parry. The humor knows no social bounds --it leaves no one behind.

South China Sea Rats follows an army forensic anthropologist and a team of soldiers on a deployment into Vietnam to recover the remains of a missing pilot from 1965. This is the first such mission for Dr. Barbara "Doc" Crittendon. There is much to learn and experience. The soldiers and officers teach her important survival techniques, such as high-frequency radio communication and helicopter egress techniques. She in turn explains archaeological excavation methods, how to set up a proper grid square, and how to succeed in the endurance test of constant screening. Although she seemingly comes from a different world, the military team members and Doc Crittendon find a shared value in humor--if one can laugh at oneself and his or her predicament. The drudgery of routine transforms this excursion into a lively adventure of creative wit and emotional parry. The humor knows no social bounds --it leaves no one behind.

The first conference on the Marine Biology of the South China Sea was convened in Hong Kong in 1990, to celebrate the opening of the Swire Institute of Marine Science. The second was convened in Guangzhou, China, in 1993. The third conference returned toHong Kong in 1996 and, in a continuing pattern of growth, was attended by 127 scientists and students from 14 countries and territories. Of the 1O4 keynote addresses, papers and posters presented at the meeting, 42 are published here, following critical peer review, under the symposium categories of Taxonomy and Biological Diversity, Biology and Ecology and Coastal Zone Management and Conservation of the Biological Resources, of the South China Sea.Each conference sets its own symposia themes but in view of the rapid, perceived, decline in the marine environment of the South China Sea and the overexploitation of its resources, the 1996 meeting focused its attention on these issues.There are many meetings related to marine science convened by the countries of the South China rim. Some are national, others are international, but most are typically convened by agencies and attendance is restricted to an invited few, usually senior scientists. Europe hosts a European Marine Biology Symposium, that is convened in a different country each year and which sets the meeting's themes. The proceedings of those meetings constitute one of the most authoritative accounts of the marine biology of European waters. The meeting itself provides a forum for scientists and students, so that international collaborative research is now a key feature of European marine science. First convened in 1996, the 32 symposia are a tribute to international co-operation in research in a marine environment that, of itself, knows no boundaries.The South China Sea countries also need such a forum, free of political dogma. This conference proceedings is the third to help promote such an event, hopefully, one day, at a greater frequency than three years. The fourth conference is to be convened in the Philippines in 1999.This volume then is an international perspective on the South China Sea by scientists who research it and are concerned for its future. It contains information that should appeal to marine biologists throughout the world and, in particular, to those in Asia.

This first edition of South China Sea is the successor to Stephen Davies and Elaine Morgan's Cruising Guide to Southeast Asia, Volume I (Imray). Building on the earlier work, this new edition has been updated and expanded to include coverage of Cambodia and Taiwan. For the past 12 years, Jo Winter has been cruising these waters in her 45' Island Packet, Brother Wind, and she describes it as one of the most diverse, beautiful, unspoilt and undiscovered sailing areas in the world. The book covers thousands of miles of coastline, a multitude of islands and inland up many of the region's navigable rivers. Along with a comprehensive range of information to help with planning a cruise in this region, the introductory section details weather information, including coverage of typhoons, and also indicates piracy risk areas to be avoided. Sailing directions include small scale area plans to orientate the navigator and larger scale plans to show details of harbours and anchorages. Full colour throughout, the plans and numerous photographs illustrate key features and places. Whether transiting the region or planning a more extended cruise along any of the coastlines bordering the South China Sea, this guide is an essential companion.

THUNDER ON THE RIM On the South China Sea an oil rig erupts in flames—as AK-47 tracer rounds stitch the night and men die in pools of blood. The SOSUS underwater network catapults news of the attack to Washington—while ChiCom troops mass on the Vietnamese border. Ten divisions of Chinese shock troops blast their way south, overrunning the U.S.-U.N-led Emergency Response Force. But the West's best warriors fight back. U.S. Special Forces, British SAS, and the legendary Gurkhas, their Kukri knives drawn, go toe-to-toe with the invaders. Tomcats and F-18s pulverize the jungle. And the Military Sealift Command hurls Aegis cruisers and Wasp-Iwo Jima, and Spruance-class attack ships—spearheaded by Sea Wolf subs--into the South China Sea. From Japan to Malaysia, the Pacific Rim is ablaze—in a hell called . . . WORLD WAR III - SOUTH CHINA SEA "Superior to the Tom Clancy genre, with characters that came alive . . .and the military aspect far more realistic."—The Spectator

Scholars have long assumed that Spanish colonial rule had only a limited demographic impact on the Philippines. Filipinos, they believed, had acquired immunity to Old World diseases prior to Spanish arrival; conquest was thought to have been more benign than what took place in the Americas because of more enlightened colonial policies introduced by Philip II. Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines illuminates the demographic history of the Spanish Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, in the process, challenges these assumptions. In this provocative new work, Linda Newson convincingly demonstrates that the Filipino population suffered a significant decline in the early colonial period. Newson argues that the sparse population of the islands meant that Old World diseases could not become endemic in pre-Spanish times. She also shows that the initial conquest of the Philippines was far bloodier than has often been supposed and that subsequent Spanish demands for tribute, labor, and land brought socioeconomic transformations and depopulation that were prolonged beyond the early conquest years. Comparisons are made with the impact of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas. Newson adopts a regional approach and examines critically each major area in Luzon and the Visayas in turn. Building on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, she proposes a new estimate for the population of the Visayas and Luzon of 1.57 million in 1565—slightly higher than that suggested by previous studies—and calculates that by the mid-seventeenth century this figure may have fallen by about two-thirds. Based on extensive archival research conducted in secular and missionary archives in the Philippines, Spain, and elsewhere, Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines is an exemplary contribution to our understanding of the formative influences on demographic change in premodern Southeast Asian society and the history of the early Spanish Philippines.

Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes reveals China's history and culture through the eyes of ordinary men and women using an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates history, anthropology, folk studies, and literature to examine the sociocultural and symbolic worlds of gangsters, sorcerers, and prostitutes in late imperial and modern China.

Big Ugly Fellows is a real-life story of Barbara X. Crittendon, a novice Army Forensic Anthropologist, who is on only her second mission to search for and recovery Missing in Action servicemens’ remains from the Vietnam War. In this operation, she must work with her military team — active duty soldiers, airmen, and marines all — to formulate and execute a plan to find evidence of two B-52 crew who had been lost in Operation Rolling Thunder back in December 1972. When she and her team arrive in 1996, the only observable sign of a crash is an odd-shaped fish pond in the middle of a vast expanse of agricultural fields. What they find below the still and placid water’s surface shocks them all and changes lives forever.

|This volume discusses the relationship between economic interests, motivations of state action and the interaction of states in the potential for regional institutional development in the Asia-Pacific region.

Meet Ava Lee — the smartest, most stylish heroine in crime fiction since Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salandar — in the first installment of the wildly popular Ava Lee novels. Ava Lee is a young Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant, who specializes in recovering massive debts and works for an elderly Hong Kong–based “Uncle,” who may or may not have ties to the triads. At 115 lbs., she hardly seems a threat. But her razor-sharp intelligence and unorthodox rules of engagements allow her to succeed where traditional methods have failed. In The Water Rat of Wanchai Ava is persuaded to help an old friend of Uncle’s, whose nephew is owed $5 million from a seafood company that was producing cooked shrimp for a major U.S. retailer. The deal went sideways. The money disappeared. On a journey that takes her to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Guyana, and the British Virgin Islands, Ava encounters everything from the Thai katoey culture to corrupt but helpful law enforcers. But it’s in Guyana where she meets her match: Captain Robbins, a godfather-like figure who controls the police, politicians, and criminals alike. In exchange for his help, Robbins decides he wants a piece of Ava’s $5 million action and will do whatever it takes to get his fair share...