"A compelling tale of one of the most fascinating theaters of World War Two falls short by excluding the voices of those in Burma who experienced the tragedy... The Burma Road, a legendary feat of World War Two, was forged across rugged terrain to serve as a supply route for China when its ports were cut off by Japanese invaders. Eventually it connected to the Ledo Road, linking China to India. That story would be interesting enough, but Donovan Webster?s new book, The Burma Road: The Epic Story of the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003], is by no means just about the Burma Road. It aims to be a concise history of the entire China-Burma-India, or CBI, theater of operations. Webster has produced a clearly composed portable military history book, although for more depth and scope I would recommend Lewis Allen?s definitive work, Burma: The Longest War 1941-1945...Burma today is still embroiled in World War Two in many ways, with slave labor and human wave assaults as common as jeep taxis. The land link between India and China continues to be a source of trouble as a conduit for heroin and timber. Webster briefly describes the present day Burma/Ledo Road, but his fellow Outside magazine writer Mark Jenkins offers a far more revealing (and harrowing) glimpse of the way things are now with "The Ghost Road" in the October 2003 issue of Outside."