"Village landscapes," writes Bret Wallach, "are among the most perfect places on the planet." In this highly engaging 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.

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.