pbFrom the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm's length from any organized state societybbr br For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them--slavery, conscription, taxes, corv e labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an anarchist history, is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain agricultural practices that enhance mobility pliable ethnic identities devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders and maintenance of a largely oral culture that a