Thailand's Struggle for Democracy: The Life and Times of M.R. Seni Promo
David Van Praagh, with a foreword by Stephen Solarz | | ISBN: 978-08419-1321-9 $34.95 |
| 1996/358 pages Distributed for Holmes and Meier Publishers |
DESCRIPTION
This political biography portrays one of the world's most fascinating statesmen and depicts Thailand as a nation at war with itself. David Van Praagh traces the history of the country's often thwarted attempts to become increasingly democratic—from the 1930s until after the shocking clashes of May 1992 in the streets of Bangkok between the military and the middle class.
Van Praagh also incisively compares other Southeast Asian countries' experiences with democratization and analyzes the implications for Western foreign policy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Van Praagh is an American journalist who has covered Asia for more than three decades.
"Van Praagh is eminently credible, and succeeds in turning what we might have thought a marginal character in the modern Asian drama into a significant player."—David K. Wyatt
"I have just finished reading Thailand's Struggle for Democracy and it is the only book of the 50+ that I have read so far that has truly helped me understand what really happened in Thailand in the last half of the 20th century ... I learned more from [this] book than all the other available books on modern Thai history combined. And I now feel I can begin to understand the role and mystery of Pridi for the first time...."—Eric Rubin