Presenting Thailand

John Hoskin's informative and entertaining text and Mark Standen's distinctive and sympathetic photographs present a wide-ranging introduction to the Kingdom in all its aspects, geography, history, people, religion, art, culture, and cuisine.The main text is accompanied by sidebars and box stories which are used to highlight details, provide anecdotal information, and give a lively and reader-friendly look to the book.An introduction, giving an overview of Thailand, its location, climate, diversity and all its essential characteristics is followed by 5 regional chapters: Bangkok: City of Angels; Beaches and Islands: Coastal and Southern Thailand; Historical Heartland: The Central Plains; Into the Hills: Chiang Mai and Northern Thailand; and Traditional Thailand: The

In The Geography of Southeast Asia, Rumney discusses an area that has long been of interest to geographers and other academics. As interest in Southeast Asia has grown, particularly over the past forty years, the volume and variety of scholarly publications on the varied geographical aspects of the region have also increased. This collection is an attempt to identify, organize, and present as many of these works as possible. The region as a whole, and each individual country of the area, are covered in individual chapters. Each chapter is further systematically organized by topic, including general works, cultural-social geography, economic geography, historical geography, physical geography, political geography, and urban geography. This book presents a myriad of sources, such as atlases, books, chapters, articles, dissertations, and theses are included, as well as works written in English, French, German, and other languages, providing the reader with a thorough view of Southeast Asian geography.

This volume looks at facets of cultural interactions between India and Thailand---two historically significant countries of the South East Asian region. For the first time a comprehensive discussion on historical and contemporary cultural interactions between Indian and Thailand has been attempted in this volume. Asianization has become an important contemporary concept and, in this context, understanding cultural exchange within Asia is an important exercise. The chapters in this volume include contributions from noted scholars based in India and Thailand on different areas of cultural exchange: from religion, to art, artefacts, clothing, music---especially Indian classical music, cuisine, and the contemporary use of shared civilizational tools in the cultural diplomacy of both countries. Written in a lucid and accessible language, the chapters in this insightful volume are of interest to academics and researchers of cultural studies, Asian studies, development studies, modern Asian history, policy makers and general readers.

Over the past several years, the Thai popular culture landscape has radically transformed due to the emergence of “Boys Love” (BL) soap operas which celebrate the love between handsome young men. Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture is the first book length study of this increasingly significant transnational pop culture phenomenon. Drawing upon six years of ethnographic research, the book reveals BL's impacts on depictions of same-sex desire in Thai media culture and the resultant mainstreaming of queer romance through new forms of celebrity and participatory fandom. The author explores how the rise of BL has transformed contemporary Thai consumer culture, leading to heterosexual female fans of male celebrities who perform homoeroticism becoming the main audience to whom Thai pop culture is geared. Through the case study of BL, this book thus also investigates how Thai media is responding to broader regional trends across Asia where the economic potentials of female and queer fans are becoming increasingly important. Baudinette ultimately argues that the center of queer cultural production in Asia has shifted from Japan to Thailand, investigating both the growing international fandom of Thailand's BL series as well as the influence of international investment into the development of these media. The book particularly focuses on specific case studies of the fandom for Thai BL celebrity couples in Thailand, China, the Philippines, and Japan to explore how BL series have transformed each of these national contexts' queer consumer cultures.

Che Guevara’s widow remembers a great revolutionary romance tragically cut short by Che’s assassination in Bolivia. When Aleida March first met Che Guevara, she was a twenty-year-old combatant from the provinces of Cuba, he an already legendary revolutionary and larger-than-life leader. And yet there was another, more human side to Che, one Aleida was given special access to, first as his trusted compañera and later as the love of his life. With great immediacy and poignancy, Aleida recounts the story of their epic romance—their fitful courtship against the backdrop of the Cuban revolutionary war, their marriage at the war’s end and the birth of their four children, up through Che’s tragic assassination in Bolivia less than ten years later. Featuring excerpts from their letters, nearly one hundred never-before-seen photographs from their private collection, and a moving short story Che wrote for Aleida, here is an intimate look at the man behind the legend and the tenacious, courageous woman who knew him best—a story of passionate love, wrenching sacrifice, and unwavering heroism.