[New from the Press] The Marcos Era: A Reader

HOT OFF THE PRESS—The unprecedented anthology about a collective assessment of Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.’s regime is now available at the Ateneo University Press. 

Aptly titled “The Marcos Era: A Reader,” this book, edited by Leia Castañeda Anastacio and Patricio N. Abinales, appraises the different facets of Marcos Sr.’s policies, programs, and personalities during his regime. This is an intergenerational and interdisciplinary conversation featuring the works of historians, political scientists, social scientists, economists, lawyers, investigative journalists, and public intellectuals filling in gaps in knowledge to arrive at a more balanced, holistic, and sober assessment of one of the most formative eras in Philippine history.

Editor and legal historian Leia Castañeda Anastacio considers the book “timely and urgent” seeing the Marcos family’s return to Malacañang. She adds, “but perhaps any attempt to make sense of their comeback must start with understanding the rise and fall of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.” However, the idea of a Marcos Reader dates back to before the May 2022 presidential election. University of Hawai‘i–Manoa professor and editor Patricio Abinales says they received the drafts of the essays amidst the elections. Election results sealing another Marcos presidency, Abinales notes, will ensure that the conversations will continue.

Get your copy of the book from our website, or Lazada and Shopee stores.

Last October 4, The Marcos Era was officially launched through an online forum. It was joined by the editors and a panel of chapter authors, themselves authorities in their respective fields. These included historian and Ateneo de Manila University professor Michael D. Pante, economist and University of the Philippines assistant professor Jan Carlo B. Punongbayan, journalist and bestselling author Marites Dañguilan Vitug, and sociologist and Ateneo de Manila University associate professor Jayeel S. Cornelio.

Pante discussed the metropolitan trauma under the Marcosian rule; Punongbayan, about the persistent Marcosian golden age myths and how to dispel them, and Vitug, about the horrors the Muslim community suffered under the Marcos regime. Anastacio and Abinales introduced the book and gave a preview of its chapters; Cornelio hosted and moderated the program. The conversations among the panel and with the audience covered a wide range of topics from legal to legacies, cultures, economy, and politics. Rewatch the forum and book launch here on Facebook and YouTube.

Abinales hopes the anthology will encourage readers to look at the Marcos historical record in a “clear-eyed fashion.” Its extensive and incisive essays reveal such a complicated legacy whose full import and impact have yet to be thoroughly unpacked. 
 

Get your copy of the book

Website  |  Lazada  |  Shopee

 

About the Editors

Leia Castañeda Anastacio is a legal historian. Placing first in the Philippine Bar Examinations after graduating from the Ateneo de Manila University, she obtained her LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees from Harvard University. An independent scholar and Research Fellow at Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Program, she is the author of The Foundations of the Modern Philippine State: Imperial Rule and the American Constitutional Tradition, 1898–1935 (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Patricio N. Abinales is professor at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Hawai‘i–Manoa. His latest book is Modern Philippines. He also wrote three books published by the Ateneo University Press—Making Mindanao: Cotabato and Davao in the Formation of the Philippine Nation-State; State, Orthodoxy and History in the Muslim-Mindanao Narrative; and State and Society in the Philippines. 
 

About the Contributors

Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. is professor, Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University. His latest book is Peripheries: Histories of Anti-marginality. He is currently working on a book on ilustrado nationalism.

Lisandro E. Claudio is assistant professor at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. 

Christianne F. Collantes is associate professor at the Political Science and Development Studies Department at De La Salle University–Manila.  Her research interests include gender politics and globalization in Asia. She obtained her PhD in gender studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Some of her published works can be found in the International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, Critical Asian Studies, and South East Asia Research. Her book, Reproductive Dilemmas in Metro Manila: Faith, Intimacies, and Globalization, was published by Springer in 2018.

Jayeel S. Cornelio is associate professor of development studies and the associate dean for research and creative work at the Ateneo de Manila University. His extensive writings on religion and politics have appeared in Social Compass, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, and Religion, State, and Society. For his scholarship, he received the 2017 Outstanding Young Scientist award from the National Academy of Science and Technology and was named among The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) 2021.

Sheila S. Coronel is director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and the Stabile Professor of Professional Practice in Investigative Journalism at Columbia University. She worked for many years as a journalist in the Philippines and was a co-founder and director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

Marites Dañguilan Vitug is one of the Philippines’ most accomplished journalists, winning awards and public recognition for her reportage on politics, justice, and security. A bestselling author, she has written several books on Philippine current affairs. She is editor at large of Rappler, a leading news website, and former editor in chief of Newsbreak, a pioneering investigative magazine.

Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem is professor of political science, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman. She is also the executive director of the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS).

Glenda M. Gloria has been a journalist since the 1986 ouster of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, working in print, broadcast and digital platforms. She has written books on the military, media, and politics. A co-founder of Rappler, she is at present its executive editor.

Caroline S. Hau is professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. Her books include Elites and Ilustrados in Philippine Culture, Interpreting Rizal, and Remembering/Rethinking EDSA, which she co-edited with JPaul Manzanilla. 

Thomas M. McKenna is an anthropologist who has been conducting research and writing about the culture and history of the Bangsamoro people of Mindanao since 1985. He is the author of Moro Warrior, the story of the Moro guerrillas of Mindanao in World War II, and Muslim Rulers and Rebels. He currently lives in San Francisco, California.

Meynardo P. Mendoza is a part-time faculty member of the Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University. He was formerly director of the Ateneo Martial Law Museum and the Ateneo Center for Asian Studies (ACAS). 

Michael D. Pante is associate professor at the Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University, and chief editor of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints. He is the author of A Capital City at the Margins: Quezon City and Urbanization in the Twentieth-Century Philippines (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019).

Jan Carlo B. Punongbayan is assistant professor and graduate director at the University of the Philippines School of Economics (UPSE). He is also a regular columnist of the online news site Rappler and co-founder of Usapang Econ, a group of economists advocating economic literacy in the Philippines. 

Manuel L. Quezon III is an opinion and speech writer, curator, and editor and writes history. He has worked in media, the private sector, and government.

Vicente L. Rafael is professor of history and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of several works on the cultural politics and history of the Philippines, including, most recently The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (Duke Univesrity Press, 2022). 

Eduardo C. Tadem is convenor of the Program on Alternative Development, University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies and professorial lecturer of Asian studies, University of the Philippines Diliman. He has a PhD in Southeast Asian studies from the National University of Singapore.  He is a retired professor of Asian Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman, where he served as editor in chief of the journal Asian Studies. He has been active in several progressive civil-society and social movements. He has over 150 publications in books, academic journals, and periodicals on various political economy and social issues.

Mark R. Thompson is head and professor of politics at the Department of Asian and International Studies and director of the Southeast Asia Centre at the City University of Hong Kong. His book The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines (Yale University Press, 1995), which is based on his Yale University dissertation, is the seminal and still unsurpassed study on the anti-Marcos, non-communist movement. His latest book on the Philippines was The Routledge Handbook of the Contemporary Philippines (Routledge 2018), which he co-edited with Professor Eric V. Batalla of De La Salle University.

Criselda D. Yabes is a writer and journalist who has covered events in the Philippines, writing about the military and conflicts in Mindanao. Her latest book is The Battle of Marawi, and others, on the military, include Peace Warriors and The Boys from the Barracks. Her first novel, Crying Mountain, longlisted for the Man Asia Prize in 2010, is about the Muslim rebellion of the 1970s in Sulu. 

Get your copy of the book

Website  |  Lazada  |  Shopee