This book review directs only to the part one of volume one of The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, edited by Nicholas Tarling. This part one includes five articles altogether. The first article is the ”Writing of Southeast Asian Studies”, authored by D. Legge, concerning with the historical development of studying about the Southeast Asian history, the change of the study proposition and explanation of history. Its discussion has little involved in the historical events, so I skip this article for reviewing. This text will put forward and comment on the other four articles in sequence. My approach of reviewing is directing to select some arguments of the articles, and given my comments on it. So, the readers can easily to find the original writers' arguments and my comments in each paragraph.