This book offers hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on about 200 groups, the six countries they live in, some of their leaders, and their political, economic, social, cultural and religious aspects. The chronology covers important events. The introduction discusses both the diversities and similarities of the groups' ethnicities, languages, religious practices, and customs. And the bibliography supplements the dictionary entries.

Jean Michaud is professor of anthropology at Université Laval, Canada. He has published extensively on the societies of the Southeast Asian Massif and taught about them in the United Kingdom, France and Canada. His latest books, Moving Mountains: Highland Livelihoods and Ethnicity in China, Vietnam and Laos (UBC Press, 2010, co-edited with Tim Forsyth) and 'Incidental' Ethnographers. French Catholic Missions on the Frontier of Tonkin and Yunnan, 1880-1930 (Brill, 2007) address the current and past condition of these societies on the margins.