Brian Eyler is Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. He spent more than 15 years living and working in China and Southeast Asia and is widely recognized as a leading voice on environmental, energy, and water security issues in the Mekong region.
'Readers of this book will respond as I have done to Eyler's richly evocative prose when he writes of the experiences that may be had travelling on and by the river ... I regret not having met Eyler and becoming aware of his writing only recently. I am envious of his sustained personal association with the river over a decade and a half.' Milton Osborne, Mekong Review `The definitive work on Asia's most vital river, this book is more than sound scholarship and wise policy. Brian Eyler shares lyrical and haunting stories, showing how and why the Mighty Mekong must be saved.' Ted Osius, Former US Ambassador to Vietnam (2014-17) `A wonderfully illuminating and beautifully written portrait of life along the Mekong, and of the forces transforming the region. Eyler offers the type of insight that can only be gained from years of on-the-ground experience.' Elizabeth Economy, Director for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations `A moving requiem for a complex ecosystem upon which millions depend for their livelihoods. The book is an indictment of the failure to treat the Mekong as a single integrated system or to incorporate the local wisdom of the communities who best understand the river.' Judith Shapiro, author of China's Environmental Challenges 'Brian Eyler tells the story of a river veiled in mystique. He sounds a warning about the ominous challenges it now faces: the encroachment of the state, breakneck hydropower development, the threats of climate change, and an increasingly powerful China bent on harnessing the Mekong to power its continued rise. This is the definitive story of the present and possible future of the Mekong, and an elegy for one of Asia's great rivers.' Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen's Cambodia