"...Being of direct interest to audiences both inside and outside sets Aung-Thwin apart from most other historians of Burma writing in English in recent decades. Aung-Thwin has been explicit in re-evaluating evidence and interpretations that have shaped Burmese history for the past 100 to 150 years.(2) He has argued that much of our understanding of Burmese history comes from the hands of a few colonial-era scholars, such as G. H. Luce. Working in good faith with the skills and understandings that they had, these scholars wrote the best histories that they could, but their interpretations inevitably reflected contemporaneous ideas. Some of these scholars were involved in the subjugation of the Burmese empire or connected with the colonial regime, and so had an interest in portraying aspects of Burmese history and its participants in a particular light... Whatever the specific points of interpretational disagreement that the reader may have with the Aung-Thwins? work, these should not blind us to all that Michael Aung-Thwin has done over the past several decades. He has shaken up the complacent certainties of the Burmese historiographical landscape, forcing us to reconsider our own positions and understandings by reexamining the available evidence. He has alerted to us that the ground under our feet may not be nearly as solid as we take it to be...."