Shiraishi Takashi’s Empire of Seas: Thinking About Asia (2021) is one of the works that exemplified Anderson’s cult following in area studies. According Shiraishi, it was a product of his sojourn at Cornell University from 1987 to 1996, where he witnessed the disappearance of the Soviet Union and Eastern European area studies program following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Those events made him contemplate the same for Southeast Asia (158). The 1990s also saw Southeast Asia’s rise not only in the global economy but also as a strategic partner for the West in forging new security alliances. Southeast Asia’s resilience in the Asian financial crisis from 1997 to 1999 was an excellent example of how it constantly dealt with burgeoning global crises. For instance, economic and financial recovery in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia—though imperfect—proved exemplary. In other words, the timing of the book’s publication came at a critical time.