The Last Siamese: Heroes in War and Peace tells the life stories of 12 exceptional characters from Thailand or Siam between the 1900s and 1960s. Engaging and rich in detail, they are tales full of adventure, courage and adversity, offering lessons in leadership, resolve and unselfishness. Among them are profiles of So Sethabutra, a political prisoner in the 1930s who spent his time in captivity writing Thailand's first Thai-English dictionary; Khamsing Srinawk, a provocative writer from the countryside who sought exile in Sweden; Colonel Vicha Dhitavadhana, whose military career led him to work for the Nazis; and Prince Bira, the debonair Grand Prix racing champion.

Through case studies of pilot conservation projects launched by the Yunnan Provincial Archives in recent years, this book comprehensively and systematically discusses issues in the conservation of ethnic oral history material and the development of ethnic oral history resources. After an overview of ethnic oral history material in general, the book gives an introduction to the oral history material of the Bai, Hani, Lisu, Wa, Zhuang, and Qiang ethnic groups; discusses theoretical research and work practices related to ethnic oral history; elaborates upon the methods for managing and integrating ethnic oral history archives; reviews the history, current state, and existing issues of work related to ethnic oral materials; summarizes experiences gained from international collaboration in the conservation of ethnic oral materials; and reflects upon issues such as the development of ethnic oral history resources and the establishment of oral history resource systems in multi-ethnic border regions. As the result of research on the management of specialized archives and work related to oral archives, this book contributes towards the establishment of ethnic oral archival science as an academic discipline and enriching the knowledge structure of oral history and the science of managing oral archives.

Japan at Nature's Edge is a timely collection of essays that explores the relationship between Japan's history, culture, and physical environment. It greatly expands the focus of previous work on Japanese modernization by examining Japan's role in global environmental transformation and how Japanese ideas have shaped bodies and landscapes over the centuries. The immediacy of Earth's environmental crisis, a predicament highlighted by Japan's March 2011 disaster, brings a sense of urgency to the study of Japan and its global connections. The work is an environmental history in the broadest sense of the term because it contains writing by environmental anthropologists, a legendary Japanese economist, and scholars of Japanese literature and culture. The editors have brought together an unparalleled assemblage of some of the finest scholars in the field who, rather than treat it in isolation or as a unique cultural community, seek to connect Japan to global environmental currents such as whaling, world fisheries, mountaineering and science, mining and industrial pollution, and relations with nonhuman animals. The contributors assert the importance of the environment in understanding Japan's history and propose a new balance between nature and culture, one weighted much more heavily on the side of natural legacies. This approach does not discount culture. Instead, it suggests that the Japanese experience of nature, like that of all human beings, is a complex and intimate negotiation between the physical and cultural worlds. Contributors: Daniel P. Aldrich, Jakobina Arch, Andrew Bernstein, Philip C. Brown, Timothy S. George, Jeffrey E. Hanes, David L. Howell, Federico Marcon, Christine L. Marran, Ian Jared Miller, Micah Muscolino, Ken'ichi Miyamoto, Sara B. Pritchard, Julia Adeney Thomas, Karen Thornber, William M. Tsutsui, Brett L. Walker, Takehiro Watanabe.

The "Bidun" ("without nationality") are a stateless community based across the Arab Gulf. There are an estimated 100,000 or so Bidun in Kuwait, a heterogeneous group made up of tribes people who failed to register for citizenship between 1959 and 1963, former residents of Iraq, Saudi and other Arab countries who joined the Kuwait security services in '60s and '70s and the children of Kuwaiti women and Bidun men. They are considered illegal residents by the Kuwaiti government and as such denied access to many services of the oil-rich state, often living in slums on the outskirts of Kuwait's cities. There are few existing works on the Bidun community and what little research there is is grounded in an Area Studies/Social Sciences approach. This book is the first to explore the Bidun from a literary/cultural perspective, offering both the first study of the literature of the Bidun in Kuwait, and in the process a corrective to some of the pitfalls of a descriptive, approach to research on the Bidun and the region. The author explores the historical and political context of the Bidun, their position in Kuwaiti and Arabic literary history, comparisons between the Bidun and other stateless writers and analysis of the key themes in Bidun literature and their relationship to the Bidun struggle for recognition and citizenship.