"Southeast Asia - an infinitely fascinating part of the world, whose people are beautiful and welcoming, whose ancient cultural traditions still thrive today, whose great religious relics and works of art dazzle the traveler." "At the same time, however, Southeast Asia is haunted by tyranny and repression - ruled by governments that dismiss democracy and human rights as Western indulgences and view the most severe ecological degradation as a small price to pay for economic growth." "Taking us with him into Burma, Laos, Singapore, Borneo, and Cambodia, Stan Sesser shows us these lands of charm and cruelty - and ubiquitous paradox - as we have never before seen them. For example:" "In LAOS, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the villagers, even those who were maimed by U.S. bombs, welcome a visiting American with unreserved warmth and hospitality - and they have turned the endless bomb craters we left behind into fish ponds whose edges are lined with decorative rows of spent artillery shells." "In SINGAPORE, an economic powerhouse where employment is universal and everything works with awesome efficiency, the government imprisons a political dissident in a guardhouse in the middle of a theme park." "In BORNEO, we meet the gentle Penan people, who don't even have a word for greed in their language and who consider the environment paramount - but they are literally starving as their rain-forest habitat is devastated by their own politicians in league with Japanese loggers." "In CAMBODIA, the BMW-filled boomtown of Phnom Penh flourishes while the rest of the country struggles in poverty; meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge are rising again (with a surprising amount of popular support)." "Enlightening, politically savvy, exotic, and exciting, The Lands of Charm and Cruelty provides a journey of discovery that leaves the reader with enduring images and a new understanding of the extraordinary worlds it surveys."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved