The books

2026Out of print

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

Institute of Bangsamoro Studies

A collection of personal stories from inside the Bangsamoro revolution, launched in Cotabato City on 17 June 2026. Its premise is to tell stories that had to stay hidden while the movement was clandestine.

2022In print

Thomas M. McKenna

Armin Lear Press

The Moro guerrillas of Cotabato and Lanao in the Second World War, led by Edward Kuder’s foster son Mohammad Adil and the American schoolteacher himself, pieced together from their papers and the memories of those who fought.

2020In print

Carmela Fonbuena

Journalism for Nation Building Foundation

The five-month battle for Marawi in 2017, from the soldiers, hostages, residents, officials and former fighters who lived it, by a defence journalist who covered it day by day.

2017Free to read

Tengku Abdul Ghafar

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Malaysia’s facilitator of the government–MILF talks on how they reached the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro in 2014, and how he got the two sides past their deadlocks.

2016Free to read

Abhoud Syed M. Lingga

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

The stories of almost 300 Bangsamoro men and women, from Maguindanao, the Lanao provinces, the Zamboanga peninsula, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, of decades of conflict and their hopes after the 2014 peace agreement.

2015Free to read

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Interviews with 10 of the 145 MILF fighters who handed in their weapons at the first decommissioning, in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, in June 2015, on the lives they hoped to build.

2012In print

Tom Stern

Anvil Publishing

The life of the founder of the Moro National Liberation Front, from Jolo and the University of the Philippines to Tripoli, Jeddah and the ARMM governorship, written with his cooperation.

2011In print

Criselda Yabes

Anvil Publishing

Years on the road with the army in Mindanao and Sulu, and the soldiers who found themselves building schools as often as fighting.

2011Out of print

Roberto C. Layson

MindaNews

Stories from Pikit, Cotabato, where the author served as parish priest, of Muslims and Christians rebuilding trust after war. It draws on years of interfaith and peacebuilding work in a town hit hard by war.

2003In print

Gracia Burnham

Tyndale House Publishers

A year as a hostage of the Abu Sayyaf in the jungles of Basilan, by the American missionary whose husband was killed in the rescue that freed her.

2003Out of print

Roberto C. Layson

Initiatives for International Dialogue

Reflections by the Oblate parish priest of Pikit, Cotabato, a town repeatedly caught in fighting between the army and the MILF. Drawing on what war did to Muslim and Christian villagers there, it argues that war itself is the enemy.

1997Self-published

Ernesto M. Espaldon

Published by the author

The Tausug guerrillas who fought the Japanese in Sulu, told by a physician who was the youngest commander in the Sulu Area Command in 1945.

1923Free to read

Sydney A. Cloman

Doubleday, Page & Company

The memoir of a US Army officer posted to Sulu at the start of American rule, and what he made of the datus and the people he was sent to govern. Out of copyright and free to read.