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"Memoirs of an English Governess at the Siamese Court - (The King and I)" [Illustrated] Anna Harriette Leonowens The True story of Anna Leonowens from Wales and who she served for six years in the Royal Palace in Bangkok Siam (modern Thailand) This is one of the most famous stories and was made into the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein musical "The King and I" as well as the movie "Anna and the King of Siam" with Jody Foster.
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Thai Street Food David Thompson Thai Street Food transports readers straight into the bustling heart of Thailand’s colorful street stalls and markets--from the predawn rounds of monks fanning out along the aisles to the made-to-order stalls ablaze in neon and jammed with hungry locals after dark. Featuring nearly 100 authentic dishes plus lavish photography accompanying every recipe, this stunning cookbook is the definitive guide to Thailand’s culinary street culture. The recipes, such as Steamed Fish with Chilli and Lime Sauce, Pork Satay, Roast Duck and Egg Noodle Soup, and Sweet Banana Roti illuminate the beguiling world of food so integral to the Thais.
Scholar and chef David Thompson lives with a singular passion for Thailand’s customs, culture, and people. Although he claims “It’s all about the food,” this ambitious work shares his insights into the rhythms and nuances of Thai daily life along with a fascinating history of its richly diverse street cuisine. This cookbook is a tempting, inspiring, and authoritative account of Thai street food, the vibrant culinary mosaic rich with community. |
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Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories Of World War II Loet Velmans Loet Velmans was 17 when the Germans invaded his native Holland in 1940. Almost immediately, he and his family decided to escape to London, which they did on board the Dutch Coast Guard cutter, Seaman's Hope. Deciding theyt would be safer in the Far East, the family sailed to the Dutch East Indies-now Indonesia-where Loet joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago, conquered it in a week, and made prisoners of the local Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Loet and his fellow POW's were sent to slave labor camps to build a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border, to invade and conquer India. Some 200,000 POW's and slave laborers died in building this Railroad of Death. Loet, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable maltreatment, never gave up hope...and survived. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit came this stunning memoir. |
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Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy Kevin Bales Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan and brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations. His investigation of conditions in Mauritania, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, and India reveals the tragic emergence of a "new slavery," one intricately linked to the global economy. The new slaves are not a long-term investment as was true with older forms of slavery, explains Bales. Instead, they are cheap, require little care, and are disposable.
Three interrelated factors have helped create the new slavery. The enormous population explosion over the past three decades has flooded the world's labor markets with millions of impoverished, desperate people. The revolution of economic globalization and modernized agriculture has dispossessed poor farmers, making them and their families ready targets for enslavement. And rapid economic change in developing countries has bred corruption and violence, destroying social rules that might once have protected the most vulnerable individuals.
Bales's vivid case studies present actual slaves, slaveholders, and public officials in well-drawn historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. He observes the complex economic relationships of modern slavery and is aware that liberation is a bitter victory for a child prostitute or a bondaged miner if the result is starvation.
Bales offers suggestions for combating the new slavery and provides examples of very positive results from organizations such as Anti-Slavery International, the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil, and the Human Rights Commission in Pakistan. He also calls for researchers to follow the flow of raw materials and products from slave to marketplace in order to effectively target campaigns of "naming and shaming" corporations linked to slavery. Disposable People is the first book to point the way to abolishing slavery in today's global economy.
All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund anti-slavery projects around the world. |
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The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War Joshua Kurlantzick How the West's greatest spy in Asia tried to stop the new American way of war—and the steep price he paid for failingJim Thompson landed in Thailand at the end of World War II, a former American society dilettante who became an Asian legend as a spy and silk magnate with access to Thai worlds outsiders never saw. As the Cold War reached Thailand, America had a choice: Should it, as Thompson believed, help other nations build democracies from their traditional cultures or, as his ex-OSS friend Willis Bird argued, remake the world through deception and self-serving alliances? In a story rich with insights and intrigue, this book explores a key Cold War episode that is still playing out today. - Highlights a pivotal moment in Cold War history that set a course for American foreign policy that is still being followed today
- Explores the dynamics that put Thailand at the center of the Cold War and the fighting in neighboring Laos that escalated from sideshow to the largest covert operation America had ever engaged in
- Draws on personal recollections and includes atmospheric details that bring the people, events—and the Thailand of the time—to life
- Written by a journalist with extensive experience in Asian affairs who has spent years investigating every aspect of this story, including Thompson's tragic disappearance
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The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej Paul M. Handley Thailand’s Bhumibol Adulyadej, the only king ever born in the United States, came to the throne of his country in 1946 and is now the world’s longest-serving monarch. The King Never Smiles, the first independent biography of Thailand's monarch, tells the unexpected story of Bhumibol's life and sixty-year rulehow a Western-raised boy came to be seen by his people as a living Buddha, and how a king widely seen as beneficent and apolitical could in fact be so deeply political and autocratic.
Paul Handley provides an extensively researched, factual account of the king’s youth and personal development, ascent to the throne, skillful political maneuverings, and attempt to shape Thailand as a Buddhist kingdom. Handley takes full note of Bhumibol's achievements in art, in sports and jazz, and he credits the king's lifelong dedication to rural development and the livelihoods of his poorest subjects. But, looking beyond the widely accepted image of the king as egalitarian and virtuous, Handley portrays an anti-democratic monarch who, together with allies in big business and the corrupt Thai military, has protected a centuries-old, barely modified feudal dynasty.
When at nineteen Bhumibol assumed the throne, the Thai monarchy had been stripped of power and prestige. Over the ensuing decades, Bhumibol became the paramount political actor in the kingdom, silencing critics while winning the hearts and minds of his people. The book details this process and depicts Thailand’s unique constitutional monarchhis life, his thinking, and his ruling philosophy. |
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Another Quiet American: Stories of Life in Laos Brett Dakin *** Fifth Edition, complete with New Introduction! ***
"No other personal account of contemporary Laos is as informative, under-the-surface and well written."
-- Joe Cummings, author of Lonely Planet Laos
"A must for anyone looking to understand Laos today."
-- Jeff Cranmer, author of Rough Guide Laos
Brett Dakin spent two years working in Vientiane, Laos and returned to the States a changed man. In Another Quiet American, he takes you through the corridors of power and into the living rooms of Laos.
You'll meet his boss, a wealthy general whose power and reputation scares his countrymen; a prince with connections to the French colonial past; an American pilot who left home for Indochina during the war and never returned; and rich Lao twenty-somethings who have all the money they could want, but have yet to find happiness.
Dakin provides a sympathetic yet irreverent glimpse into life in one of the world's few remaining communist nations, questioning the United States' influence on the country and embarking on the soul-searching journey of a young American abroad.
"A witty, personal account ... through the eyes of a young American among raucous expats in Vientiane."
-- Frommers Southeast Asia
"An excellent contribution to a better understanding of life in Asia."
-- Far Eastern Economic Review
"Honest, well written, entertaining and informative."
-- South China Morning Post |
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Sergeant Smack: The Legendary Lives and Times of Ike Atkinson, Kingpin, and His Band of Brothers Ron Chepesiuk Sergeant Smack chronicles the story of North Carolina’s Leslie “Ike” Atkinson, an adventurer, gambler and one of U.S. history’s most original gangsters. Under the cover of the Vietnam War and through the use of the U.S. military infrastructure, Atkinson masterminded an enterprising group of family members and former African American GIs that the DEA identified as one of history’s ten top drug trafficking rings. Ike’s organization moved heroin from Thailand to North Carolina and beyond.
According to law enforcement sources, 1,000 pounds is a conservative estimate of the amount of heroin the ring transported annually from Bangkok, Thailand, through U.S. military bases, into the U.S. during its period of operation from 1968 to 1975. That amount translates to about $400 million worth of illegal drug sales during that period.
Born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Ike Atkinson is a charismatic former U.S. Army Master Sergeant, career drug smuggler, scam artist, card shark and doting family man whom law enforcement nick-named Sergeant Smack. He was never known to carry a gun, and today many retired law enforcement officials who had put him in jail refer to him as a “gentleman.” Sergeant Smack’s criminal activities sparked the creation of a special DEA unit code named CENTAC 9, which conducted an intensive three-year investigation across three continents. Sergeant Smack was elusive, but the discovery of his palm print on a kilo of heroin finally took him down.
In 1987, Ike tried to revive his drug ring from Otisville Federal Penitentiary, but the Feds discovered the plot and set up a sting. The events that follow seem like the narrative for a Robert Ludlum novel. Atkinson was convicted again and nine years added to his sentence. Ike was released from prison in 2006 after serving a 31-year jail sentence. Atkinson’s story is controversial because his ring has been accused of smuggling heroin to the U.S. in the coffins and/or cadavers of dead American GIs. As this book shows, the accusation is completely false.
The recent movie, “American Gangster,” which depicted the criminal career of Frank Lucas, distorted Atkinson’s historical role in the international drug trade. Sergeant Smack exposes the lies about the Ike Atkinson-Frank Lucas relationship and documents how Ike, not Lucas, pioneered the Asian heroin connection.
“Drug kingpin Ike Atkinson, is the real deal, and not the stuff of Hollywood legend. The author delivers an eminently readable book about a genuine Mr Big who knows that no fictional makeover is required for his compelling story – the truth is more than enough." —Steve Morris, Publisher, New Criminologist
“Sergeant Smack is meticulously researched and its prodding for the truth by author Ron Chepesiuk makes it an excellent non-fiction crime story. Along with a compelling history of Ike Atkinson’s life and criminal career in drug smuggling, the author has managed to put the truth to numerous falsehoods contained in the major movie, American Gangster, about the life of Frank Lucas.“ —Jack Toal, retired DEA agent who worked the investigation of Frank Lucas
“Finally, the real story. I've waited 40 years for this book.” —Marc Levin, Director of the documentary, “Mr. Untouchable”
“Ron Chepesiuk has gone from publishing the Black gangster classics, Gangsters of Harlem and Black Gangsters of Chicago, to crafting Sergeant Smack, an astonishing masterpiece.” —David “Pop” Whetstone, Owner, Black Star Music and Video
“Sergeant Smack forcefully debunks the urban legend of Black family groups smuggling heroin from Southeast Asia in the bodies of dead GI soldiers while recounting the colorful saga of the authentic American gangster. Highly recommended.” —Gary Taylor, journalist and author of the award-winning true crime memoir, Luggage by Kroger. |
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Birds of Thailand (Princeton Field Guides) Craig Robson Thailand is the mecca of birding in Southeast Asia. It's convenient to get to and get around, and its birdlife is wondrously diverse, exotic, and plentiful. With Birds of Thailand, Craig Robson and fourteen leading illustrators give us the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and concise field guide to this magnificent country's rich avifaunal heritage in recent years, covering the more than 950 species recorded as of early in the new millennium. Facing each of the 128 striking, full-color plates are species accounts accompanied by maps for each, illustrating precise distribution within Thailand. The accurate text covers identification, voice, habitat, behavior, range, status, and breeding for all species and subspecies. Illustrations and entries on a number of species recorded only quite recently are also included. The country's varied habitats assure something for every birder, from freshwater marshes to coastal areas, from fields and rice paddies to lush jungles and mangrove forests. In Thailand, one can delight in the brilliantly colored pittas, broadbills, and sunbirds; the deep, dazzling green of barbets, parrots, parakeets, and leafbirds; the aptly named frogmouths; the roosterlike resplendence of the (male) red junglefowl; the ruff, whose breeding male in full plumage sports a truly singular head; and much, much more. Birders and all ecologically minded travelers daydreaming of a voyage to this gem of a country will want the latest source of thorough information on its birdlife--in a highly portable, pithy, and vividly illustrated guide. What they will want is Craig Robson's Birds of Thailand. - Comprehensive field guide written specifically for this magnificent, bird-rich country
- 128 full-color plates by expert artists covering every major plumage variation, with juveniles also illustrated where notably distinct from males and females
- Over 950 maps for individual species illustrating their precise distribution within Thailand
- Accurate, up-to-date, and concise text covering identification, voice, habitat and behavior, range, status, and breeding of all species and distinctive subspecies
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Bangkok Babylon Jerry Hopkins In the colorful tradition of Orwell and Hemingway, Maugham and Theroux, Jerry Hopkins recalls his first decade as a Bangkok expatriate by profiling twenty-five of the city's most unforgettable characters. Among them are a Catholic priest who has lived and worked in the Bangkok slums for 35 years, three Vietnam war helicopter pilots who opened a go-go bar and a documentary filmmaker who lives with elephants. |