While doing research for a nonfiction book on the Laos war I took hundreds of photographs of my own and collected many others. When Tim Pfaff of the Chippewe Valley Museum, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, invited me to a conference on the Hmong, I gave a lecture in the form of a slide show and at the end requested anybody in the audience interested in putting out a photo book to come up to the stage. Thus began my contact with Lue Vang, Ed.D., and Judy Lewis, who has already published several books on Hmong culture with the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, outside Sacramento, CA> The three of us agreed that a visually-driven account of the Laos war might be useful, particularly among people who themselves lived through the war and its refugee aftermath. The war brought more than a quarter million Laotians to the U.S. alone, and though all of them had vivid memories, few has souvenirs, and fewer still had means of giving their children a clear idea of their personal and family histories. Thus this book - an attempt at a "roots"album.