S knows I like to read about places we're going, so he got me a copy of History of Thailand: A Captivating Guide to the Thai People and Their History. Because of our short turnaround time, I skipped to the chapters beginning in WWII, but then backtracked a bit because it turns out there had been a big revolution in Thailand in 1932 which ended 700 years of rule by the monarch.
Since WWII, the country has been in near-constant turmoil, a pendulum swinging from advanced democratic reforms to authoritarian military rule (albeit one that still has a monarch and now also has a parliament). As a people and as a government, they just can't seem to find a balance between those two extremes.
The book was what it purported to be, and the writing was okay if a little bit repetitive with certain phrases. (There's not a single listed author, but rather it's part of the "Captivating History" series.) But it gave me the basic background I was looking for, and I appreciate that. As with A Brief History of Indonesia, though, I struggled with the names of historical figures. Thai names tend to be quite long and are, obviously, foreign to me, making them difficult to remember. And since lots of these folks were repeatedly in and out of power over the years, I did a lot of flipping pages to see if this new guy was the same person who was in charge 5 years ago - and often he was.
In summary, it gets the job done, but not much else.
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