Demystifying Southeast Asia's cuisine, this cookbook translates years of photography, culinary training, education, and resulting expertise into an adventure of recipes, stories, and practical advice on cooking. Regardless of exotic flavors, foreign ingredients, and unfamiliar techniques, the guide demonstrates how cooking remains universal and the science of food holds fast. Including more than 100 recipes, 700 photographs, and vivid anecdotes, this is the perfect book for anyone seeking to learn about the flavors of Southeast Asian cuisine or just looking for a unique, recreational read.

KEY ISSUES Context. Economic performance has improved over the last year. The recovery is taking hold, although domestic activity remains weak, in part constrained by weak banks and inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Inflation has declined, the current account remains in large surplus, and international reserves have increased. The authorities place a priority on preserving macroeconomic stability, tackling banking sector vulnerabilities, and reforming SOEs, though implementation has been gradual in some key areas. Outlook and risks. Growth is projected to recover gradually over the coming years, with the current account returning to a deficit and inflation contained. On current policies, public debt is projected to reach 60 percent of GDP. Risks include weaker trading partner growth, geopolitical tensions, slow structural reforms, and delayed fiscal consolidation. Early conclusion to key trade negotiations would be growth-positive. Fiscal policy. Deficits have been sizable and rising public debt requires attention. A medium-term growth-friendly consolidation is recommended, based on enhancing revenue and rationalizing unproductive expenditures while preserving crucial social and capital spending. This would ensure public debt sustainability with space to address contingent liabilities from banking sector and SOE restructuring. Monetary and exchange rate policy. The current monetary policy stance is appropriate. Greater exchange rate flexibility would help buffer external shocks, facilitate improved reserve adequacy, and help lay the groundwork for shifting toward using inflation as a nominal anchor over the medium term. Banking sector reform. Several policy measures have been taken recently, but the overall gradual approach will likely continue constraining credit growth and keep the system susceptible to shocks and significant asset deterioration. A more expeditious recognition of nonperforming loans, bank restructuring and orderly resolution would support robust credit creation and macro-financial stability. State-owned enterprise reform. Progress is being made. Implementing restructuring plans and accelerating equitization would help ensure more efficient resource allocation, strengthen banks, and deliver higher future growth. Reform should also focus on strengthening corporate governance and ensuring a level playing field.

"During the war Miller was a member of the mission to Saigon and to the Paris peace negotiations. As one involved in the events of those years, he provides us with fascinating and informative observations of such luminaries as Maxwell Taylor, Henry Cabot Lodge, Philip Habib, William Bundy, David Bruce, Robert Komer, and the South Vietnamese leadership and offers new insights into the conduct of diplomacy during the war.

Vietnam annually sends a half million laborers to work at low-skill jobs abroad. Angie Ngọc Trần concentrates on ethnicity, class, and gender to examine how migrant workers belonging to the Kinh, Hoa, Hrê, Khmer, and Chãm ethnic groups challenge a transnational process that coerces and exploits them. Focusing on migrant laborers working in Malaysia, Trần looks at how they carve out a third space that allows them a socially accepted means of resistance to survive and even thrive at times. She also shows how the Vietnamese state uses Malaysia as a place to send poor workers, especially from ethnic minorities; how it manipulates its rural poor into accepting work in Malaysia; and the ways in which both countries benefit from the arrangement. A rare study of labor migration in the Global South, Ethnic Dissent and Empowerment answers essential questions about why nations export and import migrant workers and how the workers protect themselves not only within the system, but by circumventing it altogether.

“An indispensable tool for college students and general readers, the only available text that treats Vietnamese history in its entirety, from its beginning to the twenty-first century, as it places Vietnam within the regional and global context. SarDesai’s Vietnam looks at Vietnam as a country and not just as a war. The text has also benefited from its author’s decades-long expertise on Southeast Asia as reflected in the comprehensive bibliography and use of the latest works.” —NGUYEN THI DIEU, Ph.D., Temple University

Studies of the escalating tensions and competing claims in the South China Sea overwhelmingly focus on China and its increasingly assertive approach, while the position of the other claimants is overlooked. This book focuses on the attitude of Vietnam towards the South China Sea dispute. It examines the position from a historical perspective, shows how Vietnam’s position is affected by its wish to maintain good relations with China on a range of issues, and outlines how Vietnam has occasionally made overtures to both the United States and Japan in order to bolster its position, and considered the possibility, so far resisted, of taking China to formal arbitration under the auspices of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The book concludes by assessing the future prospects for Vietnam’s position in the dispute.

Ten American and Japanese specialists offer a comprehensive analysis of one of the most dramatic developments in Asia today: the re-emergence of Vietnam - not as the belligerent champion of a militant ideology and socialist cause, but as an open, friendly country seeking a respected place in the world community. Basing their observations on five years of study, visits to Vietnam, and numerous interviews with knowledgeable officials, scholars and businessmen there and in the United States and Japan, the authors evaluate the political, ecnomic, social and foreign policy changes that have been taking place in Vietnam over the past decade, trace the responses of the United States and Japan and offer a policy prescription for responding to the challenges of the future.