The names echo like the last long notes of a bugle call: Hiroshima, Dien Bien Phu, Tiananmen Square; MacArthur and Mountbatten; The Quiet American and Bridge over the River Kwai. In a twentieth-century welter of war, Depression and Communism four empires crumbled and the West was bundled out of the East. John Keay's acclaimed study of this imperial finale draws on contemporary sources ranging from Ho Chi Minh to Dirk Bogarde. The narrative swoops from the showpiece cities of Shanghai, Saigon and Manila to the tough backwaters of Borneo and the tinkling rice fields of Bali. Grandeur of treatment is matched by trenchant analysis; unexpected continuities are revealed; and to the interaction of West and East is traced the dynamism of the Far East today....