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Among the ruins of beautiful Angkor Wat, Tiger, Monkey, Water Buffalo and Gecko argue over who would make the greatest king. They decide to race to the top of the hill, each hoping to prove they are most worthy. But along the way their strengths and weaknesses are revealed. Will any of them be good enough to be King? The luscious illustrations of Graeme Base are emphasised in his artwork of Angkor Wat, one of the most beautiful ruins known to people all over the world.

The rich and evocative bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat have captured the imagination of travelers, artists, and scholars for centuries. Built for the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the twelfth century, the enormous temple complex consists of an outer enclosure surrounded by a moat, with three further concentric rectangular enclosures inside it. The bas-reliefs featured in this book are carved on the walls of the third enclosure. Jaroslav Poncar has brilliantly captured the detail of these huge reliefs, measuring more than two meters in height and five hundred meters in overall length, using the high-precision technique of slit-scan photography. One hundred full-page panoramic photographs bring readers within the very walls of Angkor. Scenes from the great Indian epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata are expansively explained and interpreted by Angkor expert Thomas S. Maxwell.

Can a twelfth-century Cambodian king's sense of compassion and justice translate to the present?

"The Civilization of Angkor is remarkable and unique in that it delves into the prehistoric roots of the civilization. Higham is THE international authority on southeast Asian archaeology, and presents an up-to-date and provocative synthesis of Angkor."--Brian Fagan, author of Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations, and co-editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. "In blending archaeological and documentary data to chronicle the rise of this important Southeast Asian state, Higham's rich history of Angkor effectively refutes traditional models of state development in the Mekong region and offers insights regarding the nature of Angkor and the processes that led to its emergence."--Miriam Stark, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i and editor of The Archaeology of Social Boundaries

Mannikka takes the reader on a detailed tour of Angkor Wat, moving from the western entrance bridge, across the long causeway to the central galleries, and up to the central tower itself, showing what the design of the temple tells us about Khmer beliefs regarding their king, their deities, and the world around them. Detailed temple plans illustrating measurement patterns and numerous photographs of all parts of the temple accompany the text. Angkor Wat: Time, Space, and Kingship shows clearly the role that astronomy, history, cosmology, and politics can play in determining a structure's format and dimensions. The new methods of architectural analysis pioneered here will serve as a model for architectural historians in Asia and elsewhere.

A guided tour by local children leads the author--and readers--inside an ancient Cambodian temple and around its ruins, where they explore the mysteries of the site and discover a little-known secret. 12,000 first printing.

In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.

Jacquie Mouhot and Paaku the Lotus-Born are divided by six centuries but linked by a common curse. In medieval Cambodia, Paaku is an orphan whose community believes he may be a reluctant incarnation of a god, causing sectarian turmoil for the kingdom's leaders. Meanwhile, in 1921, Jacquie follows the footsteps of her grandfather, a famous explorer, to Indochina, where she becomes immersed in the tragedy of Paaku's history: a story simultaneously unfolding in the intertwined present and past, a story in which she still has a vital role to play.

In his international bestseller Beneath a Marble Sky, John Shors wrote about the ancient passion, beauty, and brilliance that inspired the building of the Taj Mahal. Now with Temple of a Thousand Faces, he brings to life the legendary temple of Angkor Wat, an unrivaled marvel of ornately carved towers and stone statues. There, in a story set nearly a thousand years ago, an empire is lost, a royal love is tested, and heroism is reborn. When his land is taken by force, Prince Jayavar of the Khmer people narrowly escapes death at the hands of the conquering Cham king, Indravarman. Exiled from their homeland, he and his mystical wife Ajadevi set up a secret camp in the jungle with the intention of amassing an army bold enough to reclaim their kingdom and free their people. Meanwhile, Indravarman rules with an iron fist, pitting even his most trusted men against each other and quashing any hint of rebellion. Moving from a poor fisherman's family whose sons find the courage to take up arms against their oppressors, to a beautiful bride who becomes a prize of war, to an ambitious warrior whose allegiance is torn--Temple of a Thousand Faces is an unforgettable saga of love, betrayal, and survival at any cost. READERS GUIDE INCLUDED

A panoramic tour of Cambodian history traces its rediscovery in the mid-nineteenth century and what the latest findings have revealed about Khmer civilization, documenting such periods as the five-century part-Hindu, part-Buddhist empire, the gradual abandonment of Angkor, and the move of the capital downriver to the Phnom Penh area. Reprint.