The story of Mindanao is truly much more than a story of war. But war's very persistence on that great island suggests that the peace and progress Mindanaoans crave - Muslim, Christians, and Lumad - cannot be reached without first revisiting the sources of conflict and retracing its tortuous path to the present. This book is an exhaustively researched, evenhanded, and briskly written report in the Mindanao that most filipinos read about everyday but have never really known. It holds great value for scholars and pedestrians alike: a sifted mass of detail that often reads like a political thriller. All the characters of great drama are here-upstage, downstage, and in the shadows - and all the powerful emotions: courage, betrayal, anguish, and even the occasional flash of humor. to read it is to begin to understand, after all these centuries, what Manila, Mindanao, Malaysia, and Mecca have integrally to do with one another.