Showing 1-10 of 13 results
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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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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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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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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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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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How Bangkok came to be
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 03/11/2017
» In 1963, Edward Van Roy arrived in Thailand to work on a survey of hilltribes. This was a golden era of anthropology with an emphasis on ethnicity and villages. Since his retirement from the UN in 1997, Van Roy has been tramping round the localities of old Bangkok, peering into the temples and shrines, rooting out the memories of the remaining old residents, and ransacking libraries for memoirs and histories.
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The perfection of humour
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 02/06/2017
» The story of Vessantara, or Wetsandon, is perhaps the most famous and best-known tale in Thailand. Although originating among the jataka tales of India, most think it a local creation (Thais call it chadok). There is a Pali version in the early Buddhist texts, and official Thai-language adaptations since the 15th century. But the story also lives in popular memory, in pictures on wat walls, and in performances at annual festivals, and in these forms there is great scope for creative adaptation.
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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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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.
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From Dan Beach Bradley to Todd Lavelle
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 15/12/2014
» As a story, this account of Americans in Siam begins rather slowly. Missionaries who make very few converts. Traders who do very little trade. Diplomats with very little tact. In 1870s, the American consul sums up his countrymen in Siam as "mutinous sailors, rascally captains, quarrelling and libidinous missionaries". The only American who leaves a real mark on Siam's history in this era is the missionary-printer-newspaperman-medic, Dan Beach Bradley. By 1900, there are around 125 Americans in Siam.
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