Author: rosecruzchurma

Title: VIRGIN OF BALINTAWAK.  Looking Back 8.

“Essays that narrate stories from our past.  I hope they provide some sense and meaning too.”  from the author’s foreword.

The book consists of 23 essays.

 

 

 

Price:$7.25

Author: Ambeth Ocampo

Anvil Publishing Inc. 2014 p.99

Title: CHULALONGKORN’S ELEPHANTS, The Philippines in Asian History.  Looking Back 4.

Another compilation of essays that begins and ends with an elephant, that the author claims is “more reflective than usual and going beyond Rizal”.  Despite deviating from his 19th century comfort zone, the author’s trademark irreverent humor is very much evident.

Price: $7.25

Author: Ambeth Ocampo Revised Edition.

Anvil Publishing.  2011 & 2016.  p.102

Title: INDEPENDENCE X 6, Looking Back 11.

Begins with 1898 as the reference point.  Covers Philippines-US relations including an essay on Mark Twain, an anti-imperialist.  Includes a memorable quote on the back cover by the author—“1898 reminds us that it is one thing to gain independence and quite another to know what to do with that independence.”

Price: $7.25

Author: Ambeth Ocampo
Anvil Publishing Inc. 2016 100p.

Title: LOOKING BACK

Observations and insights on Philippine history—these essays were originally written for the back page of the Philippines Daily Globe in the late 1980s.  After two decades in print, these essays were reissued and updated.  As the author notes in the Introduction—“History as a longer shelf life than other writings and it is hoped that these essays, despite their age, continue to delight and entertain.”

Price: $7.25

Author: Ambeth Ocampo

Anvil Publishing Inc. 2010 92p.

Title: ONES OF CONTENTION, The Andres Bonifacio Lectures.

“This edition was completely updated since 2012 but its release delayed because the author was waiting for new data that could make the conclusions stated in this book obsolete.  New data never came, thus the book was released two years later “… especially for our young people, if only to help generate more light than heat in our continuing search for truth and meaning in the tragic death of the Supremo of the Katipunan.”

In The Journal of American History, Sayuri Shimizu notes that “…Ocampo effectively uses …the art of storytelling to school his audience about scrutinizing public memory as a responsibility of informed citizenship.””

Price: $9.00

Author: Ambeth Ocampo

Anvil Publishing Inc. 2014 149p.

Title: QUEZON’S SUKIYAKI, Looking Back 12.

“Most of these essays covers Manuel Quezon’s presidency and Japan-Philippines relations.  The author notes in his introduction– “Textbook history didn’t teach me much about WWII, the Japanese were portrayed as evil, but not as bad as the Spanish who shot Rizal.  From this viewpoint, the US liberated us twice: first from the Spanish in 1898, then the Japanese in 1945.  Extended stays in Japan made me rethink may things personal and historical that resulted in essays compiled in this book.”

Ambeth Ocampo received the prestigious Fukuoka Prize in 2016 in recognition of his popularization of Philippine history and the use of the past to find connections with other countries that resulted in mutual understanding.”

 

Price: $7.25

Author: Ambeth Ocampo

Anvil Publishing Inc. 2016 123p.

Title: DEATH BY GARROTE, Looking Back 3

This is a collection of essays from the use of garrote in the execution of the national heroes to mamon, that favorite Filipino pastry and others of the same kind.  The writer Carmen Guerrero Nakpil calls Ocampo’s retelling of history as a new genre—“…he has rescued history from the cold, forbidding halls of academe.  He has made of history something amusing, entertaining,…as immediate as a newspaper headline, as irreverent as a rapper’s song.”

Price: $7.25

Author: Ambeth Ocampo

Anvil Publishing Inc. 2010 p.100

Title: PREHISTORIC PHILIPPINES, Looking Back 6.

“Tina Cuyugan, author and editor notesin the back cover that “…these beguiling essays on what lies beyond the fringes pf Philippine recorded history—whether pointing out the laughing carabao on the margins of a centuries old map or combing for shards of Ming porcelain on a coral beach—Ocampo reminds us that the endless gathering and joining and breaking apart of ‘useless’ bits is, after all, what makes us what we are, and connects us with others in their own quest for identity.”

Price $7.25

Author: Ambeth Ocampo

Anvil Publishing Inc. 2012 p92