Chris Baker (1) (1948–)

Quite bad, considering the authors' previous books. This is an easy call for librarians and professors: definitely not essential and not a candidate for the college syllabus. (The recommended intro texts? You can't go wrong with David K Wyatt. Next, Charles Keyes and that Ingram fellow. And Paul Handley's bio of the current king might snag undergraduates too. For higher level students, look up Thongchai's Siam Unmapped)

There's no original research, neither is a historian, very little on the communist era and other interesting phenomena. Lots of sludge about the new middle class TV favorites and the like from the 1990's. Screeds about Americans that contradict Pasuk's earlier work on corruption. David Wyatt (Thailand: A Short History--[i]the[/i] essential text) devoted many more pages two decades ago to the origins of the Tai. Nothing that tells you how the Muslim South got in such a state today.

Strange, there are plenty of real historians that Cambridge could have turned to. It reminds me of a senior thesis by a student that started out with the best of intentions (the first few chapters, even if they don't deal with the first centuries of Siam (it's pretty much late 19th/20th century). But he or she got sidetracked. So much work, so many parties! So the rest gets written in a few sleepless yaa baa-fueled nights. Let's throw in stuff from the paper for cultural studies, here's some anti-US rants snagged from blogs. No time for footnotes or a bibliography! Maybe my advisor won't notice ..… (más)