delving into the successes brought on by the most eminent enterpreneurial minorities, daniel chirot and anthony reid compile interesting accounts of the hardships faced by the chinese and jews settling in foreign communities. consequently, the editors offer a book which is more than a tedious and detailed narrative; rather, chirot and reid give a rich, sensitive and sympathetic blend of history and personal stories, portraying these "outsiders" with the respect they richly deserve.

Great book, insightful, spiritual, and great entertainment. I started this book and could not put it down. I learned truths that helped me evolve spiritually. The best part was that it was great fun. Buy it!

A book assigned in many graduate courses on Southeast Asian history, "The land below the winds", gives the student an interesting look at day to day life in Southeast Asia from the arrival of the Western Europeans(1450-1680). Painstakingly researched, the book enjoys pointing out that in many ways the SE Asians had much more modern cultural practices than the "smelly" Europeans. Reid explores in each chapter seperate cultural criteria such as: physical well-bieng, material culture, social organization and lastly festivals and amusements. A myriad of topics are covered from sexual ambiguity and practices to military combat and diplomacy. Interesting tid bits abound and the book makes good reading for both the student and general reader. This is the best of the current offerings in the field and I highly recommend it.

This superb little collection of essays and journal notes sheds light on an obscure, yet important aspect of Asian history. We Westerners tend to give the wartime aims of Japan a uniformly dark aspect, yet there were idealists among the Japanese conquerors who dreamed of an Asia free of Western imperialism. One cannot be naive in dealing with this subject - the brunt of the Japanese occupation machine was geared to subjugation and exploitation. Yet in the East Indies there were many Japanese administrators who prepared the Indonesians for the inevitable battle with the returning Dutch.