The authors (professors of architecture and urban planning at the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) explore the impact of designating Luang Prabang, Laos as a UNESCO World Heritage Zone of Preservation on the built environment of the area. They raise questions concerning the way that the framing or packaging of heritage involved in the World Heritage designation relies on the erasures of "inconvenient" heritages that are perceived as potentially divisive for local populations, unpalatable for tourists, incongruent with contemporary development, or against the political interests of the state. They examine erasures in the physical environment, the way transformations in the built environment are related to erasures of "inconvenient heritages" in the sociocultural environment, and the impact of these erasures on the everyday lives of residents. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)