The following 4-star review was posted to Amazon and Goodreads on 5/1/18:

Blood, Dreams and Gold was published by an academic press (and is priced accordingly) but reads like it was written by a former writer for the Economist. Which it was. Blood, Dreams, and Gold is clearly written and accessible to a Western neophyte. Particularly valuable is the effort to put modern Burmese history in the broader context of SE Asian post-independence nativism.

It is a good introduction to Burma, and I found it more accessible than The River of Lost Footsteps, but it isn’t the sort of book that leaves much of an impression after you have finished it and put it back on your shelf. My knowledge of Burma has surely increased, but it sits categorized in my brain as Burma knowledge, not Blood, Dreams and Gold knowledge, if that makes sense.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of Blood, Dreams and Gold via NetGalley.