Dr. Souchou Yao's new book "The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a Small, Distant War" is a meditation on the lives and struggles of ordinary Malayans in one of the Cold War's first conflicts. An anthropologist by training, Dr. Yao reflects on why he felt the need to write a book about his birthplace, his family's involvement in Malaya's only revolution, as well as the longing of former insurgents - now mostly octogenarians - who sacrificed the prime of their lives to partake in one of the greatest adventures of the twentieth century - a guerrilla war between Commonwealth armed forces and communist insurgents from 1948 to 1960.