SOUTHEAST ASIA: New Book on Asia’s Rise Through the Eyes of a Journalist

COVER TPOA

The ‘top 100’ anthology seeks to represent a perspective on the rise of Asia and its evolving relationship with the U.S. through a benchmark approach of columns that highlighted major historical events, from the handover of Hong Kong to China, to the Asian Financial Crisis, and to the rise of China itself.  The book’s subtitle is: “Contemporary history through a newspaper column: Benchmarks on the road to the 21st century.”

This will be the sixth Tom Plate book published by Marshall Cavendish since 2007 and all of them climbed onto bestseller lists in Southeast Asia, especially the critically acclaimed ‘Giants of Asia’ series. The most recent (#4) wasConversations with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and the first ‘Giant’ was ‘Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew,” now its fourth printing and the winner in the 2011 English nonfiction category of the ‘People’s Choice Award’ in Southeast Asia.

Career journalist Tom Plate, who is Loyola Marymount University’s Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies, and founder of ‘the New Asia Media’ (asiamedia.lmu.edu), will be a featured speaker in early November at the Singapore Writer’s Festival (seehttp://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/).

SWF, founded in 1986, describes itself as “one of the Asia’s premier literary events…. The festival serves a dual function of promoting new and emerging Singaporean and Asian writing to an international audience, as well as presenting the world’s major literary talents to Singaporeans. SWF has delighted book lovers by featuring literary luminaries such as Singapore writers Shamini Flint, Alvin Pang, Suchen Christine Lim, You Jin, as well as international writers such as Steven Levitt, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Bi Feiyu, Andrew Motion and Marc Smith,” according to the festival’s website.  LMU’s Plate is one of the first American nonfiction writers to be honored by the festival.

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