Showing 1 - 7 of 7
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.
Death by a thousand cuts
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 09/07/2021
» The film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is the most celebrated Thai creative artist in the world today, awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2010 and a string of other international prizes. After wrestling with the Thai censors, he decided first to stop showing his films in Thailand, and then to stop making his films here. He has recently been making a film with an international star cast in Colombia, almost exactly the opposite point on the globe, the farthest possible distance from Thailand on the planet.
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.
At long last, history is told
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 04/05/2015
» Only a few years ago, the history of Thailand was often expressed as a "Thai race" that migrated down from the north to occupy a seemingly empty land, and then a string of kings defending them from violent neighbours and nasty colonialists. The Thai-Chinese scarcely made an appearance. A History Of Thai-Chinese, however, seeks to redress the balance.
Silent no more
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 17/03/2014
» Why have Northeasterners become such enthusiastic supporters for Thaksin Shinawatra, the Pheu Thai party and the red-shirt movement? Charles Keyes first arrived in the Northeast in 1962 as a research student in rural anthropology. After the 2010 crackdown on red shirts in Bangkok, he realised he had to rethink all he had learned and written about the region over the last 48 years. This book is the result.
Truth is rarely simple
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 19/08/2013
» Thai political leaders don't write memoirs, so Abhisit Vejjajiva's account of events from his appointment as prime minister in December 2008 to the end of the red-shirt demonstration on April 20, 2010 is path-breaking. Abhisit explains that he wrote this memoir because red shirts have made political capital by claiming that government forces killed protesters in a brutal crackdown, so he needs to set the record straight: "We have heard plenty of lies _ I now ask for the opportunity to tell the truth."
Force of the farmers
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 03/09/2012
» Once upon a time anthropologists did "village studies". They found a place that became "their village." They counted the houses, traced the kin relations, described farming systems, and analysed the rituals.