Thailand is exceptional among modern states in Asia in that it has built and retained a national culture around a traditional monarchical institution. Moreover, this culture has also been based on a dominant religious tradition, that of Theravada Buddhism. The process of creating the modern nation-state of Thailand out of the traditional Buddhist kingdom of Siam began in the nineteenth century when the rulers of Siam, confronted with increasing pressure from the colonial powers of Britain ...

From the World Fantasy Award–winning author, "a fresh, intriguing novel that captured me from page one" (Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times–bestselling author).In the early 1990s, Charles de Lint wrote and published three dark fantasies under the name "Samuel M. Key." Now, beginning with Angel of Darkness, Orb presents them for the first time under de Lint's own name.When ex-cop Jack Keller finds the mutilated body of a runaway girl in the ashes...

Despite competing with much larger imperialist neighbors in Southeast Asia, the Kingdom of Thailand—or Siam, as it was formerly known—has succeeded in transforming itself into a rival modern nation-state over the last two centuries. Recent historiography has placed progress—or lack thereof—toward Western-style liberal democracy at the center of Thailand’s narrative, but that view underestimates the importance of the colonial context. In particular, a long-standing relationship with China a...

The Master Key System is a personal development book by Charles F. Haanel that was originally published as a 24-week correspondence course in 1912. The course is a 'practical wrapper' for the seven hermetic principles as laid out in the Kybalion. Each chapter contains a sequentially numbered section to read, which includes an exercise towards the end, followed by a section with questions and answers. It has had a huge influence on successive New Thought writers, particularly those preachin...

This book explores social memory in the context of cultural crises of modernity in Thailand and Laos. It explicates the ways in which social memory constructed by the people enters modernity, and how this in turn causes fundamental ruptures with their past, as well as the various ways cultural crises are experienced in their lives. The essays in this book consider how in these crises the people constitute their cultural, social, or individual identities, particularly focusing on the theore...

Originally published under the pen name "Samuel M. Key""Years after the death of a notorious child murderer, children have begun to die again...and a crime photographer begins to suspect he has the one true clue that connects the horrific events."In the early 1990s, Charles de Lint wrote and published three dark fantasy novels under the pen name "Samuel M. Key." Now, Orb presents them for the first time under de Lint's own name.At the Publishe...

In the mid-1980s, a radio program with a compelling spiritual message was accidentally received by listeners in Vietnam’s remote northern highlands. The Protestant evangelical communication had been created in the Hmong language by the Far East Broadcasting Company specifically for war refugees in Laos. The Vietnamese Hmong related the content to their traditional expectation of salvation by a Hmong messiah-king who would lead them out of subjugation, and they appropriated the evangelical ...

In the early 1990s, Charles de Lint wrote and published three dark fantasy novels under the pen name "Samuel M. Key." Now, beginning with Angel of Darkness and From a Whisper to a Scream and concluding with I'll Be Watching You, Orb presents them for the first time under de Lint's own name.Rachael Sorenson feared she would never escape her ex-husband's abuse. Then a passing stranger came to her rescue---a stranger who had watched her from...

Mapping Chinese Rangoon is both an intimate exploration of the Sino-Burmese, people of Chinese descent who identify with and choose to remain in Burma/Myanmar, and an illumination of twenty-first-century Burma during its emergence from decades of military-imposed isolation. This spatial ethnography examines how the Sino-Burmese have lived in between states, cognizant of the insecurity in their unclear political status but aware of the social and economic possibilities in this gray...

Drawing on ethnographic research, Living Sharia examines the role of sharia in the sociopolitical processes of contemporary Malaysia. The book traces the contested implementation of Islamic family and criminal laws and sharia economics to provide cultural frameworks for understanding sharia among Muslims and non-Muslims. Timothy Daniels explores how the way people think about sharia is often entangled with notions about race, gender equality, nationhood, liberal pluralism, citizen...

Broadening an overly narrow definition of Islamic journalism, Janet Steele examines day-to-day reporting practices of Muslim professionals, from conservative scripturalists to pluralist cosmopolitans, at five exemplary news organizations in Malaysia and Indonesia. At Sabili, established as an underground publication, journalists are hired for their ability at dakwah, or Islamic propagation. At Tempo, a news magazine banned during the Soeharto regime and considere...

The Black Flags raided their way from southern China into northern Vietnam, competing during the second half of the nineteenth century against other armed migrants and uplands communities for the control of commerce, specifically opium, and natural resources, such as copper. At the edges of three empires (the Qing empire in China, the Vietnamese empire governed by the Nguyen dynasty, and, eventually, French Colonial Vietnam), the Black Flags and their rivals sustained networks of power and...