Showing 1-10 of 24 results
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Bringing the birth stories to life
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 12/10/2015
» The jataka tales or birth stories are the most vivid and accessible part of Buddhist teaching. The Buddha, once he gained the ability to recall his past lives, related all 550 of them to the monks in his following. In some lives, he was a king, some a hermit, some a pauper, and in a few an animal. The 10 longest of these tales became associated with his 10 last lives and with his attainment of the "perfections" that enabled him to be born as the historical Buddha. In this book, this Great Ten have been translated anew for the first time in over a century.
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From prostration to prostration
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 05/03/2021
» After leading a coup in 2014, Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha announced a code of "Twelve Thai Values", telling people how to think and behave. It is difficult to imagine Angela Merkel announcing "Twelve German Values", or even Narendra Modi announcing "Twelve Indian Values". Since the mid-19th century, there have been lots of Thai manuals about proper body language and oral language in social encounters. These books tell a story about power and hierarchy that Patrick Jory narrates in fascinating detail.
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The romance of the Siamese war elephant
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 03/03/2017
» 'Some so superb surpass a city's worth."
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Turning cheeks and pages
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 06/09/2018
» Egyptian mummies who come to life as sexy nymphets. Thai princes driving fast cars. A Thai superwoman who casually murders several husbands. Starlets touting breast-enhancement techniques. For a book about "nationalism and identity in modern Thai literature", this volume has a few surprises.
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Respected Southeast Asian history scholar, Michael Vickery, dies
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 07/07/2017
» With the death of Michael Vickery in Battambang, Cambodia last Thursday, Southeast Asian history lost a giant.
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A personal reflection on Thailand as a nation
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 20/05/2022
» Historian alone is an inadequate description. Charnvit Kasetsiri is a historian-activist. In 1973, he wrote a pioneering history of Ayutthaya as a Cornell University doctorate, published by Oxford University Press. He taught at Thammasat University for five decades and briefly served as rector. He has presented on Thai history at countless international gatherings. He has promoted the work of his students and colleagues so often that his prefaces for their works fill a fat book.
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The Bunnag clan from the inside
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 01/04/2022
» Bunnag may be the best-known surname in Thailand because of the size of the clan, its historical role, and the name's blessed two-syllable brevity. The resounding title of this book suggests a grand tale of the clan marching through history. Not so. This is an intensely personal account of one person refinding himself in the shadow of the past.
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Remembering the history that some want forgotten
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 11/03/2022
» Royalist history paints 1932 as a coup by a self-interested clique which thwarted King Prajadhipok's wish to introduce a constitution and led Thailand to militarism and fascism. In 2017, the plaque commemorating 1932 was ripped out of the Royal Plaza -- symbolising the wish to cancel all memory of the event. Democratic history claims 1932 as a revolution which launched Thailand towards democracy and a modern society in which the majority can participate and benefit. In 2020 the youth activists reinstalled the plaque in cyberspace and called themselves the New People's Party. The event matters, one way or the other, down to today.
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Putting the humanity into history
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 21/01/2022
» The King Of Bangkok is a graphic novel that tells the story of Thai politics over a generation from 1982 to 2012 from the angle of a trio of northeastern villagers drawn to Bangkok. The book aims to subvert more conventional accounts by using fiction rather than "history", by leading with pictures rather than words, and by focusing on ordinary people rather than generals, tycoons and politicians.
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The age of magical capitalism
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 07/01/2022
» At a press conference in 2016, Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha tugged open his shirt to reveal over a dozen amulets hanging on his chest, and explained these would give him moral support in negotiations with Russia's President Putin. The leader of globalised Thailand was vaunting the use in international diplomacy of devices made with arcane substances and blessed by monks with a reputation for expertise in magic.
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