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First published in 1972, Jeffrey Race's War Comes to Long An has never gone out of print. It has now been republished in an updated and expanded edition. While highly regarded among Southeast Asianists as a classic account of communist success in winning control of a strategic province in the Mekong Delta from the government of the Republic of Vietnam, War Comes to Long An is also a work of innovative social science. Attention to the book's long ignored social science and to the rational-choice foundations of its analysis opens up new perspectives on the "Scott-Popkin debate." It suggests the need for reconsideration of the value of rational-choice approaches to the study not only of Southeast Asian politics but also of the modern history of the region, to which War Comes to Long An speaks in previously overlooked ways.

The abrupt collapse of the ASEAN Plus Three and East Asian Summits at Pattaya on 11 April 2009 initiated four days of extreme political tension in Thailand. This tension both epitomized the current "red"-"yellow" polarization in Thai politics and society and represented the surface manifestation of deep pathologies in the Thai body politic. Four of these pathologies are the structure of the post-1997 economy, the figure of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the continuing war in the far south and concerns surrounding the end of the current reign. These pathologies leave Thailand in an incipient revolutionary situation, albeit one that must be clearly distinguished from the "revolution" that Thaksin tried to precipitate through street violence in April 2009. The seriousness of Thailand's pathologies notwithstanding, comparative perspectives offer the hope of peaceful progress towards the emergence of a new, more egalitarian Thailand. (Contemp Southeast Asia/GIGA)

The rise of the three great rice-producing and -exporting deltas of mainland Southeast Asia numbers among the most familiar chapters in the modern history of the region. On a macro level, it exemplifies the integration of the region into the North Atlantic-centered world economy during the age of high imperialism and the consequent shock of the depression of the 1930s. On a micro level, that rise has offered historians an opportunity to examine the responses of Southeast Asian cultivators to market signals; the variation in the allocation of factors of production across the Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya and Mekong deltas; and the implications of those responses and that allocation for reactions to the shock of the inter-war crisis. The principal features of the history of the mainland rice economies between 1850 and the 1930s have indeed grown so familiar as to make that history seem like yesterday's topic. Occasional attempts to propose significant revision to the story have had little impact. And the need for a major monograph on the economic history of the Mekong delta during the French colonial period remains unmet.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced her decision to run for reelection in 2004. The Philippines suffered a failed coup, divisive politics, and Communist and separatist insurgencies. Economic growth was sluggish, with large fiscal deficits and a deteriorating balance of payments. In foreign affairs, Manila continued its rapprochement with Washington.