New Mandala’s book reviews

Since May 2009, New Mandala has featured reviews of significant contributions to scholarship on mainland Southeast Asia written by Craig Reynolds. Inspired by the success and value of “Craig’s book reviews”, we joined the Thailand-Laos-Cambodia group of the Association for Asian Studies in launching a New Mandala-TLC book review series in January 2010. This series aims to offer timely reviews of scholarship on Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, southwest China, and northeast India.

It seeks to promote the recognition of shared concerns among scholars and others interested in the Southeast Asian mainland and to emerge as a major intellectual resource for both veteran students of the region and their colleagues who are just entering the field. It seeks, too, to increase awareness of scholarly work on mainland Southeast Asia among New Mandala’s broad non-specialist readership. To start, the series will feature two reviews a month; reviews will occasionally treat books in languages other than English. All reviews in the series reflect contributors’ mandate to treat works under consideration in their broadest possible context and to offer perspectives unavailable in other fora. This series is a work in progress: suggestions for its improvement, and for titles to be reviewed, are always welcome.

Recent reviews include:

• Review of Ann Danaiya Usher, Thai Forestry: A Critical History by Peter O’Donnell, 22 January 2010.
• Review of Mizuno Kosuke and Pasuk Phongpaichit, eds., Populism in Asia by William Case, 8 January 2010.

Michael Montesano

New Mandala-TLC book review editor

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Book reviews do not enjoy high status in academic fields where an emphasis is placed on research publications, and the mass media only occasionally review academic books. The aim of this series of book reviews is to introduce New Mandala readers to important, interesting books, particularly in history and religion, in an accessible format.

The reviews in this series are by Craig Reynolds who teaches in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. A list of his selected publications can be found on his personal website. He is currently studying religion, banditry, policing, and the environment in Thailand’s mid-south during the first half of the twentieth century.

New reviews will be posted intermittently. Previous reviews have included:

• Justin Thomas McDaniel, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand.
• Anne Hansen. How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860-1930.
• Wassana Nanuam, Secrets, Trickery, and Camouflage: The Improbable Phenomena. In Thai.
• Robert H. Taylor, The State in Myanmar.
• Southern Thai Encylopedia. In Thai.
• Chatthip Nartsupha, The Thai Village Economy in the Past.
• Tamara Loos, Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand.
• Han ten Brummelhuis, King of the Waters: Homan van der Heide and the Origin of Modern Irrigation in Siam.
• Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830. Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland.