What do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma’s past tell us about its present and even its future? For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma—through sanctions and tourist boycotts—only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship.

Now Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, and the story of his own family, in an interwoven narrative that is by turns lyrical, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Through his prominent family’s stories and those of others, he portrays Burma’s rise and decline in the modern world, from the time of Portuguese pirates and renegade Mughal princes through a sixty-year civil war that continues today—the longest-running war anywhere in the world.

The River of Lost Footsteps is a work at once personal and global, a “brisk, vivid history” (Philip Delves Broughton, The Wall Street Journal) that makes Burma accessible and enthralling.

Thant Myint-U was born in New York City in 1966 to Burmese parents and was educated at Harvard and Cambridge University, where he completed his PhD in history in 1996.

He has served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations, in Cambodia and in the former Yugoslavia, as well as six years with the UN Secretariat in NY, including as the head of policy planning in the Department of Political Affairs.

He has also taught modern history for several years as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and is the author of three books, The Making of Modern Burma, The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma, and, most recently, Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia.