This book is an update on Thailand's continuing turmoil since the May 2014 coup, with articles covering politics, economy, military, judiciary, religion, media, and civil society and some revisiting the red-yellow conflict of 2006–14. The focus, however, is the monarchy. Of the fifteen essays, the monarchy is the sole subject of four, a major element in seven others, and peripheral in only four, while two kings stare at us from the cover. In Thailand, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, the monarchy is at the center of academic study and daily debate.
In the mid-twentieth century, Thailand's Chakri dynasty seemed to be slipping into the cosmetic mold of most of the world's surviving monarchies. That changed in the 1960s, when the United States saw the potential to build a conservative pillar in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. Over the following half century, King Bhumibol Adulyadej crafted a...
