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"Village landscapes," writes Bret Wallach, "are among the most perfect places on the planet." In this account of the aesthetic cost of modernizing the Asian countryside, Wallach presents a dark side of Third World development. Showing through descriptive travelogue where and how so much of the beauty in these rural landscapes has been lost, he nevertheless concludes that there is still much left to protect. Writing both from his own personal experience and research, Wallach takes readers on an adventure into Asia that begins in Yunnan in southern China. He then visits five progressively more pristine places until finally, in the Ganges delta, he arrives at one of the last places in Asia virtually untouched by Western development. Wallach describes Chinese officials who, in the pursuit of more efficient production, do not hesitate to sacrifice traditional and beautiful agricultural landscapes. But it is in India, among the lingering vestiges of British colonialism, where he finds the roots of the "culture of development". Wallach warns of the danger not only of foreign experts but also of well-meaning natives returning home from the West, armed with advanced degrees and "full of technical tricks". Just as these specialists have - however grudgingly - found room in their development plans for ecological considerations, so too, Wallach contends, they should now find room for the preservation of beauty. Throughout, Wallach relates the history of rural development in South Asia along with his own observation of the contemporary rural landscape. He provides examples of how new methods of agriculture, irrigation and community development have brought dramatic transformations to Asia as a whole. In the final chapter, he describes grassroot conservation movements already working throughout Asia and discusses ways in which these places might be saved.