BOOK REVIEW: The Golden Land Ablaze (Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar)

By Bertil Lintner. Hurst & Company, London, October 2024, 280 pages, soft cover, US$34.99

Myanmar may not be a failed state, but it has failed its citizens more than any state east of Afghanistan for most of the past 75 years. It is now at as low a point as at any time since independence in 1948 after having once been the most prosperous and educated country in Southeast Asia barring Singapore. Its current tragic conditions and the reasons t…