While working on an on-going university research project I have spent five years driving the back roads of India. This book has saved my sanity as well as my tires and axles. It is by far and away the most helpful road atlas available.

The maps are better than what most Indians have ever seen in their lives, which is exactly why travellers don't need it. If you are taking public transport around the country, you get plenty of information about how to go where from LP India or from information at train stations, bus stations and other travellers. It simply isn't worth the excess weight (in a rucksack). If on the other hand you are cycling or have your own motorized vehicle, this would be irreplacable (so be careful who you show it to).

Many times it's difficult to include minute details while retaining the ability to quickly find information. This guidebook, like many other Lonely Planet books, manages to make researching a trip very easy. Included are such details as available hotels and restaurant in each city. You can also find great itinerary planners if you have no clue about where to start. With the suggested itineraries and the details about each city it's easy to plan an enjoyable trip - for backpackers and regular tourists alike.

Many times it's difficult to include minute details while retaining the ability to quickly find information. This guidebook, like many other Lonely Planet books, manages to make researching a trip very easy. Included are such details as available hotels and restaurant in each city. You can also find great itinerary planners if you have no clue about where to start. With the suggested itineraries and the details about each city it's easy to plan an enjoyable trip - for backpackers and regular tourists alike.

... This is an informative and enjoyable book, and lets you delve into Hong Kong culture and eating culture in a way the other books don't. The inside cover has a quick reference of several Cantonese terms in English and Chinese characters, including counting numbers and the very important "ngoh5 hei6 sou3 xig6 ge3" (I am a vegetarian). The book closes with over 50 pages of Cantonese phrases (including "I am ill", "I am pissed", "I want to throw up", and "Thank you, that was delicious"; a glossary of foods and terms; and a Hong Kong culinary dictionary (explains the main ingredients and cooking method). Each transliterated word is coded with the proper intonation, distilled into 6 basic tones. There are 200 beautifully photographed pages of places to eat (from concept to neon to mobile dai pai dong, to street restaurants); a discussion of the banquet; and analyses of staples, such as soups and noodles, rices and meats, and sauces. There are sections on shopping, picnics, utensils, medicinal foods, and "chinese table rules" (no vertical chopsticks please).

Back in 1991 I set off for a twelve-month global journey. With me I had a few essentials, money, clothes, my wife and a collection of Lonely Planet Travel Guide Books. After a few weeks in India we found that the books were as essential to our survival as food and water. We went on to use the Lonely Plant Guide Books (or the LP as we termed them) though out Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, North American, Canada and Mexico. Sometimes our travels would be so fast and furious that we would not read about our next destination until we had arrived the town's bus depot. We grew to love and trust the LP - it never let us down. As you might imagine I was therefore thrilled to receive their latest departure in to travel writing "World Food Hong Kong ". Furiously I dived in to its pages. When I saw that pocket size book was written by Richard Sterling a guy who would - quote " go anywhere and court any danger for the sake of a good meal" I new I would be in for an interesting literary adventure.
Richard Sterling's other titles include; Dining With Headhunters; The Fearless Dinner; and the award wining Travelers' Tale. His much-applauded writing has won him praise from The James Beard Foundation and kudos from the Lowell Thomas awards.
The book 's contents are broken down fourteen chapters -
World Food Hong Kong starts with the essential aspect of understanding the domains cuisine culture. Sterling enlightens us on the island's history, flavors and influences. My learning began. It would seem that Hong Kong's cuisine is a melting pot of the nations tastes with the addition European influences; olive oil, ketchup and asparagus all worked themselves in to the fabric of the island's "local" cooking.
Staples and specialties are next; rice, noodles, tofu, meat, sauces flavorings - the list continues as do the lessons. We all know that in 1295 Marco Polo introduced the noodle to Italy but did you know he made his mark on the Chinese too; he introduced the kiss? The content continues with Drinks, Home Cooking, and Celebrating with Food. Food as Medicine is where I must pause to narrate. Sterling reminds us that the Chinese believe that "food, medicine and health are all part of the same continuum. This is derived from the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, which applies as much to human health as it does to the cosmos. When all in the universe is in its proper balance, harmony reigns. But in a condition of imbalance, we risk ill health, misfortune violence and destruction. Lesson: Seek balance!" If you are seeking balance try the Yin Yang soup or if you are feeling peaky there is always the Lizard soup chicken and cloud fungus.
Seeking knowledge of unusual foods? Then move to the next chapter "The Bold Palate". These are foods for the brave. How about preserved eggs, snake or baby mouse wine? That is right the wine is made by preserving still-suckling baby mice in rice wine. Apparently this is jolly good for rejuvenating the body's organs. For those who have survived the journey thus far normality is ahead. Shopping and Markets, where to Eat and Drink, Understanding the Menu and a modest Recipe Section are all a great read. The where to eat chapter covers the complete dining gambit from the very upmarket Peninsular to low down street food and must try dim sum.
For the gourmet traveler the book finishes with a handy English to Cantonese culinary dictionary a must have for those who want to appear to know their jellyfish from their junk food.
As I close I am relived to say the Lonely Planet does it again, a captivating unpretentious little book, nit just physically but also financially suited for anyone's pocket. - Written By Jeremy Emmerson GobalChefs

Worst place I ever went to was Heaven Lodge in Chimanimana. Abysmal experience - how on earth can you recoment it. fantastically impressed with the bushwalking company. Give them a plug, they deserve it. Chimanimani Bushwalking Co. The only reason to go there

Swaney's guide to Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia is the best on the bookstore shelf. The level of detail is superb, from major cities to rural villages. She should consider herself more a regional geographer, as her detail concerning things like history, climate, people, and place are akin to that of one! All this and she manages to fit in the best deals on lodging, food, and travel sites, not to mention important info concerning safety and hazards associated with travel. I used this book extensively during my travels throughout last year, when I lived in Windhoek. Indeed, you can find no better than this- and the information is as good or better than what the locals give! I once had the opportunity to meet her at a hostel in Windhoek, when I was doing some academic research there, and never had the chance to tell her how much I praise this guide!

The Long Silk Strand is superb! It is the ideal book for a child dealing with the grief for a lost grandparent. It focuses on the positive aspects of life, impressing the importance of the child not only to the deceased grandmother but, also to parents and others who love the child and would be devastated if the child were to join her grandmother. Williams' work is of profoundly superior quality and is accompanied by beautiful illustrations. Anytime a child I know loses a grandparent, I purchase this book for him.

I LOVED this tale. My daughter enjoyed it, too. Set in ancient Japan, the story unfolds like a centuries old folk tale that has been lovingly passed down through the generations. What a surpise to discover it is new and original to the author. "The Long Silk Strand" represents the life of an old woman as recounted to her granddaughter, a different tale for each silk thread wound into a ball. When the ball is complete, the grandmother dies, and her loving granddaughter goes in search of her in heaven. But the living and her life ahead call her home again. The story is beautiful and simple, its rich texture wonderfully rendered in the illustrations. I can well imagine this tale told by a storyteller in a candle-lit room -- how lovely to find it in a modern book.

This book is one of a series of books that I first saw in an English-language bookstore in Tokyo at the end of a long vacation in Japan. I bought one of each to bring home, and now I see they are available from Amazon.com. These are far and away the best guidebooks to life in Japan. Great illustrations, very fun to read. Do not leave home without them!

This book provides excellent information on the many cultural aspects of Japan. It is easy to understand, wonderfully illustrated, easy to carry with, and extremely valuable to anyone interested in the Japanese culture. It is a must before a Japanese visit.

As a teacher of history, one of the most important lessons I hope to convey to students is why the study of history is of such importance. One reason is, the study of history helps us to comprehend why we are the way we are. In other words, we must look to the past to understand why we eat what we eat, wear what we wear, and view the world as we do. This book admirably supports, with clear, concise prose and colorful illustrations, why the China's history is everyones' history. It is also great fun to read!

This book is awesome! I have used it and others in this series with my students grades 1-3. The text is appropriate for both independent and read aloud, and the use of real photography is very effective. The kids were fascinated and loved learning all the neat things invented/ discovered in China. I was surprised to learn some of them myself. I would highly reccommend this book!

Perhaps a third of the book is about traveling in China, mostly in southwestern China, where private enterprise blossomed during the 1980s. The other two thirds are about trying to do research funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, sponsored and administered by the Sichuan Fulian (Women's Federation--literally "Women United"). Anthropologists' fieldwork memoirs are published after more academic presentation of their research results--in Gates's case, a 1997 book _China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism_ (that compares what she observed in the 1970s in Taiwan, historical records, and her 1987-96 research in Sichuan). The discomforts, including sickness, depression, frustrations about transportation, food, lodging, access to information, and the misunderstanding by "the natives" of the anthropologist's wisdom and good-will may not be vented in public at all.

Although the author is the major character in the account of her research in the years before and after the crackdown of the PRC gernotacry on private consumption and the accumulation of riches by anyone other than the families of high-placed officials, unlike much contemporary postmodernist anthropology, Gates remains interested in the agency of people (particularly women) trying to prosper in changing and difficult conditions in societies organized differently than the anthropologists' own one. Gates is engagingly honest about her frustrations with Chinese life as well as her joys of solidarity with those she studied and the reader learns some things about living through rapid change in the Chinese interior from her insightful book.

I lived in Japan for 9 years and this is a book I want to give friends who ask what it was like. Even though this book is about China, and China and Japan are not the same thing, reading this book helped me to understand much about what I had seen and been through in my own experience. Yes! Yes! Yes! I kept saying when I read it. This is how it was. And here is somebody putting it into words.

There are the underlying truths about Asia, and greater yet underlying truths about crossing between any two cultures. Finally, there are the truths about any woman's life whether she stays home or travels far. Hill Gates calls them as we all have seen them, from getting your period to getting your hair cut in a foreign land. There are the long van rides that constitute "vacations," the forced alcohol, the question of breakfast foods, unheated living quarters, unexplained prohibitions, glorious discoveries of beautiful scenery, and the eternal question of whether being a foreigner means you're also actually a woman.

But most of all, it's about the work. In this case, the work is anthropology. Here again, universal truths apply. Good work gives you an adequate struggle. You want to solve things, you want to apply your own talents. You want to learn and contribute, get and give, laugh and cry. Really, you do. You hope to be changed by it and come back with something to report. You enjoy sinking into the luxuries and comforts of your own familiar culture once you make it back to dry land. And then, one day down the road, you get that hankering to leave those comforts again...What a privilege having this life is. All it costs is the belief that you have control over anything.

My favorite quote from the book ought to warn off anyone who thinks you get to control your own dignity once you choose to put yourself out there. Gates nails it as she observes that, "When it comes to etiquette, the home team has the advantage."

This book describes the world of photojournalists in the Vietnam work and focuses on the death of four photojournalists in a battle over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos during a the US government's semi-covert war against the North Vietnamese in that country (the pilots of their aircraft were South Vietnamese and their death occurred during a South Vietnamese attack against NVA supply lines). The book also describes the effort to find their remains and the authors' attempt to give meaning to their loss. The photojournalists who died included two of the most celebrated of the war and two younger men of great skill. In a relatively short text, the book manages to tell their stories and the story of Vietnam War photojournalism in a manner that is reverent without being professionally aggrandizing. By coincidence, I visited the village where the search for remains took place a few months before the authors and their time in that place was particularly evocative for me. The authors offer a perspective on the war that is complex and, in some ways, more hawkish than other first-hand retrospective war accounts, although too skeptical to really fit the conceptualizations of hawk and dove that characterized the times. Given the many parallels that some have drawn between Vietnam and our own era, this is a book that thoughtful critics and partisans of the Iraqi conflict should read. My only complaint is that book does not include enough of the award winning pictures of Larry Burrows and his fallen colleagues.

Collaboratively written by foreign correspondent Richard Pyle and Associated Press photographer and photo editor Horst Faas, Lost Over Laos: A True Story Of Tragedy, Mystery, And Friendship is an historical and memorial testimony showcasing four combat photographers who died in Indochina: Larry Burrows of "Life" magazine; Henri Huet of the Associated Press; Kent Potter of United Press International; and Keisaburo Shimamoto of "Newsweek". Twenty seven years later, a recovery team was able to visit the site of the helicopter crash that took the lives of these remarkable men, recover evidence, and bring closure to the tragedy. Lost Over Laos is a powerful and poignant narration, and especially recommended reading for students of journalism.

This is one of the best books by Sulak. It is not only exciting to learn about his narrow escape from the threat from the military dictatorship in 1991, but also interesting to learn about this man's fight for social justice and democracy both domestically and globally. Daring to criticise the revered monarchy, he is undoubtedly the most frank and outspoken among the Thai social critics.

The foreword is given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

On 26 April 1995, the eminent Thai social critical and writer, Sulak Sivaraksa, wes declared innocent of charges of lese majeste and defaming the former military strongman, Suchinda Kraprayoon. The final decision by the court to hear this case was almost simultaneously followed by Sulak's nomination for the Bobel Peace Prize, inviting obnoxious but inevitable comparisons between Thailand and the military junta's suppression of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma (Myamar). This book is Sulak's autobiography as well as memories. From my viewpoint, nevertheless, this book deserves to be an important reference for those who explore the socio-political changes and democratisation in modern Thailand.

Also recommended: David Streckfuss, ed.,1996. Modern Thai Monarchy and Cultural Politics - The Acquittal of Sulak Sivaraksa on the Charge of Lese Majeste in Siam 1995 and Its Consequences, Bangkok, Santi Pracha Dhamma Institute.