Showing 11-20 of 52 results
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Too cruel to contemplate
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 07/08/2020
» The silhouette at the top right of this achingly beautiful book cover recalls a famous photograph from the Thammasat massacre of Oct 6, 1976. The photo showed a dead man hung from a tree being beaten by a chair while a ring of people watch. The silhouette is deliberately ghostly. The incident is well-known but little known. The photo is famous but the dead man, the man wielding the chair, and the prominent bystanders have never been identified. Even the location of the tree is uncertain. The whole event is full of "unanswered questions". The memory of the incident is in a limbo which Thongchai Winichakul calls "the unforgetting".
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At the crossroads of justice and virtue
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 10/07/2020
» The judiciary is the least studied element of the Thai polity. That did not matter much 25 years ago because it played almost no political role. But now the courts bring down governments, exile leaders, dissolve political parties, punish protesters and jail people for thought crimes. This book is long awaited and does not disappoint.
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A love letter to a city in flux
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 21/02/2020
» Very Thai (2005) was about things. About teasing the meaning of Thai out of objects and signs, ranging from the sublime symbolism of Thai design to the question why the paper napkins in all everyday Thai eateries were pink in colour and stupidly small in size.
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Safeguarding a saga
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 04/02/2020
» Under the Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s, Cambodian arts were almost crushed out of existence. The Royal Ballet was famously revived in the 1980s, but Cambodia also had popular traditions of music, dance, drama and puppetry. In 1998, a group started to revive these. They located surviving artists to teach a new generation of children in villages, schools and temples.
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The formidable alliance underlying modern Thai history
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 24/01/2020
» Since the mid-19th century, according to Wasana Wongsurawat, the Thai elite has remained in power through a simple two-part formula. First, cultivate the support of the leading Thai-Chinese businessmen to secure the economic base. Second, align with the dominant world power of the moment.
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An academic life
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 16/08/2019
» Charles "Biff" Keyes is exceptional. Among the foreign researchers who first came to study Thailand over half-a-century ago, few are now regularly read and cited today. Their works have aged. Academic fashions have changed. Their names have slowly faded. But anyone wanting to understand Thailand's Northeast today will still read Isan: Regionalism In Northeastern Thailand, first published in 1967 as a modest "data paper". This can partly be attributed to Keyes' staying power. He continued to teach, write and regularly visit Thailand until a handful of years ago. But it's also due to the book's quality, Biff's engaging personality, and his major role in the development of the study of Southeast Asia.
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Getting away with it
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 23/11/2018
» From 1977 to 1988, there were at least 1,436 alleged cases of arbitrary detention, 58 forced disappearances, 148 torture, and 345 extrajudicial killings in Thailand. We know these figures because an NGO investigated and reported these cases at a time when the idea of human rights excited optimism about justice and the rule of law. Amnesty International encouraged international activists to protest individual cases. Thai authorities investigated and whitewashed each case. This became standard procedure. After a time the NGO gave up. Nobody was punished.
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The best prime minister Thailand never elected
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 16/11/2018
» Anand Panyarachun's two spells as unelected prime minister in 1991-2 had such a profound effect that they now seem preordained by history. This splendid book shows how the reality was otherwise.
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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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Benjarong in detail
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 05/01/2018
» Benjarong is the brightly coloured porcelain made in China for the Thai market which enjoyed a peak of popularity in the 19th century. Dawn Rooney sets out to provide "a single reference source for Bencharong ... the book I wish had been available when I first became interested in this little-known form of ceramic art 20 years ago".
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