This is an amazing book. I could not leave it alone and read it in a couple of days.Reading it felt like a breath of fresh air.I am stunned by the author’s courage and willingness to experience and learn and present it. It is incredibly rare that an academic from some of the top schools in the world is willing to take such risks. First, she essentially lived the life of a Vietnamese bar girl for months in Ho Chi Minh City for her research. She had confidential conversations with foreign and local investors and businessmen from multiple sectors of society in their prime business setting – the bars. What she did they could have seen as dangerous to their incomes. I do not care how careful one is – the work she did was risky.Second, her background was women’s studies and feminism and some of what she learned and wrote flew in the face of many academic and popular press views of trafficking and bar girls and maybe even some of what she believed. I have no idea what she encountered or is encountering.This book can be fascinating for both academics and business people and others who simply want to understand how things work in Asia and how people live, in general. The author was not yet 30 years old. She has to be one of the most innovative young scholars in the world.I suspect she could write another book on her own life and personal journey that led her to this point in her life. I appreciated her discussion in the book of the context in which she wrote it and a bit about her own family so we could decide ourselves on what bias’s she might have brought to the table.I was so taken with the book that I flew from Bangkok to Hong Kong for a book event simply to hear her present it. This is an incredible book written by an incredible woman. If anything I said interests you, read this book.