Area Handbook Series , Laos: a country study (Federal Research Division, Washington DC). This comprehensive (though somewhat outdated) study provides in-depth background and analysis of Laos's economic, social and political institutions, as well as the cultural and historical factors shaping them. Also available online.

Marthe Bassenne , In Laos and Siam (White Lotus, Bangkok). The beautifully evocative account of a French woman's 1909 journey up the Mekong River to Louang Phabang.

Tom Butcher and Dawn Ellis , Laos (Pallas Athene). A rambling wrap-up of the country's customs, religion and history.

Sucheng Chan (ed), Hmong Means Free (Temple University Press). Fascinating personal narratives by three generations of Hmong refugees from five different families, which describe their lives as farmers on the hilltops of Laos, as refugees in the camps of Thailand and as immigrants in the United States.

Patricia Cheesman Naenna , Costume and Culture: Vanishing Textiles of some of the Tai Groups in Lao PDR (published by the author). A breakdown of the myriad of textiles to be found in Laos including detailed descriptions of Lao weaving and dyeing techniques.

Grant Evans , The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos Since 1975 (University of Hawaii Press). A provocative collection of anthropological essays focusing on the rituals and social structures of Laos yesterday and today and the attempts by the post-1975 government to reinvent "Laos".

Betty Gosling , Old Luang Prabang (Oxford University Press). Describing the history, geography and culture of the former royal capital.

Jane Hamilton-Merritt , Tragic Mountains: the Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Indiana University Press). This impressive account, written by a correspondent during the Second Indochina War, follows the Hmong from the battlefields to life after the war.

FJ Harmand , Laos and the Hilltribes of Indochina (White Lotus, Bangkok). A cultural barbarian by today's standards, the French explorer's report on his late-nineteenth-century journey through southern Laos is liberally sprinkled with amusing anecdotes.

Christopher Kremmer , Stalking the Elephant Kings: In Search of Laos (University of Hawaii Press). An at times self-righteous account of a journalist's search for the monarch who went missing shortly after the communists assumed power in 1975.

Christopher Robbins , The Ravens: Pilots of the Secret War of Laos (o/p). Many of the details of America's secretive Laos operations during the Second Indochina War didn't come out until this gripping work by a British journalist was published in 1987. Based on interviews with American pilots who fought in Laos, this hard-to-find book is well worth tracking down.

Phia Sing et al, Traditional Recipes of Laos (Prospect Books). One of the rare books explaining how to prepare Lao cuisine.

Martin Stuart-Fox , A History of Laos (Cambridge University Press). Written by an Australian scholar who covered the Second Indochina War as a foreign correspondent, this is the best available overview of Laos's history.

Roger Warner , Shooting at the Moon: The Story of America's Clandestine War in Laos (Steerforth Press). This prizewinning, thoroughly researched and crisply written account of American involvement reads like an adventure novel.