Main entry:

Osborne, Milton E.

Title & Author:

Phnom Penh : a cultural history / Milton Osborne.

Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Description:

xvi, 232 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Series:

Cityscapes

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-226) and index.
A personal introduction to a changing city -- Deciphering the palimpsest: finding the past in the present -- Iberian alarums and excursions -- Royal, city, colonial city -- Transformation: building the new Phnom Penh in an era of colonial good feeling -- Phnom Penh before the second World War: a literary way station for the Angkor temples -- Watershed years, 1939-1953 -- "Sihanouk time": 1953-1970 -- Three years, eight months and twenty days: Phnom Penh under Pol Pot -- Writing obituaries for "old Phnom Penh" -- Ambiguous city in an ambiguous country, 1979-1993 -- Today's city: somehow hope survives.

Summary:

"As a one-time resident of Phnom Penh and an authority on Southeast Asia, Milton Osborne provides a colorful account of the troubled history and appealing culture of Cambodia's capital city. Osborne sheds light on Phnom Penh's early history, when first Iberian missionaries and freebooters and then French colonists held Cambodia's fate in their hands. The book examines one of the most intriguing rulers of the twentieth century, King Norodom Sihanouk, who ruled over a city of palaces, Buddhist temples, and transplanted French architecture, an exotic blend that remains to this day.
Osborne also describes the terrible civil war, the Khmer Rouge's capture of the city, the defeat of Pol Pot in 1979, and Phnom Penh's slow reemergence as one of the most attractive cities in Southeast Asia."--Jacket.

Resources:
Table of contents

ISBN:

9780195342475 (hardcover ; alk. paper)
019534247X (hardcover ; alk. paper)
9780195342482 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
0195342488 (pbk. ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Kultur
Phnom Penh (Cambodia) History.
Cambodia Phnom Penh.
Phnom Penh

Form/genre:

History.

Added entries:

Cityscapes.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 259586
Call No.: BIB 190494
Status: Available