This collection of eleven essays by senior Asianist Craig Reynolds features debates about meaning in Southeast Asian and Thai history. He explores themes that have hitherto been treated superficially in Thai historical writing, including Siam’s semicolonialism in the late nineteenth century, the concepts of militarism and masculinity, collective memory and dynastic succession, the relationship of manual knowledge to ethnoscience, and the dialectics of globalization. Other more familiar topics under Reynolds’s microscope, treated with new material and approaches, include cultural nationalism and religious history.

K. J. Charles turns up the heat in her new Society of Gentlemen novel, as two lovers face off in a sensual duel that challenges their deepest beliefs. Silas Mason has no illusions about himself. He’s not lovable, or even likable. He’s an overbearing idealist, a Radical bookseller and pamphleteer who lives for revolution . . . and for Wednesday nights. Every week he meets anonymously with the same man, in whom Silas has discovered the ideal meld of intellectual companionship and absolute obedience to his sexual commands. But unbeknownst to Silas, his closest friend is also his greatest enemy, with the power to see him hanged—or spare his life. A loyal, well-born gentleman official, Dominic Frey is torn apart by his affair with Silas. By the light of day, he cannot fathom the intoxicating lust that drives him to meet with the Radical week after week. In the bedroom, everything else falls away. Their needs match, and they are united by sympathy for each other’s deepest vulnerabilities. But when Silas’s politics earn him a death sentence, desire clashes with duty, and Dominic finds himself doing everything he can to save the man who stole his heart. And look for the enticing Society of Gentlemen series by KJ Charles: THE RUIN OF GABRIEL ASHLEIGH | A FASHIONABLE INDULGENCE | A SEDITIOUS AFFAIR | A GENTLEMAN’S POSITION Don’t miss any of the captivating Sins of the Cities novels: AN UNSEEN ATTRACTION | AN UNNATURAL VICE | AN UNSUITABLE HEIR Praise for A Seditious Affair “This book is so good I read it in one sitting. I just couldn’t put it down. K. J. Charles has long been one of my favorite authors, and this book doesn’t disappoint. A Seditious Affair is a beautiful love story interwoven with the realism of the political unrest of the time—another winner from K. J. Charles!”—USA Today bestselling author Carole Mortimer “Without doubt, A Seditious Affair is one of the best books I’ve read this year.”—All About Romance “I still haven’t gotten over how much I loved this book. I so look forward to reading the next novel in K. J. Charles’s Society of Gentlemen series.”—Unquietly Me “Gah! It’s always the books I love the most that leave me flailing and tongue tied. . . . A Seditious Affair is not a fluffy read but it is a story you can really sink your teeth into. It’s complex, sensual, raw and gosh darn it—super romantic. It’s one of my favorite reads of [the year].”—For What It’s Worth

Dangerous Talk examines the 'lewd, ungracious, detestable, opprobrious, and rebellious-sounding' speech of ordinary men and women who spoke scornfully of kings and queens. Eavesdropping on lost conversations, it reveals the expressions that got people into trouble, and follows the fate of some of the offenders. Introducing stories and characters previously unknown to history, David Cressy explores the contested zones where private words had public consequence. Though 'words were but wind', as the proverb had it, malicious tongues caused social damage, seditious words challenged political authority, and treasonous speech imperilled the crown. Royal regimes from the house of Plantagenet to the house of Hanover coped variously with 'crimes of the tongue' and found ways to monitor talk they deemed dangerous. Their response involved policing and surveillance, judicial intervention, political propaganda, and the crafting of new law. In early Tudor times to speak ill of the monarch could risk execution. By the end of the Stuart era similar words could be dismissed with a shrug. This book traces the development of free speech across five centuries of popular political culture, and shows how scandalous, seditious and treasonable talk finally gained protection as 'the birthright of an Englishman'. The lively and accessible work of a prize-winning social historian, it offers fresh insight into pre-modern society, the politics of language, and the social impact of the law.

Uneasy Military Encounters presents a historically and theoretically grounded political ethnography of the Thai military's counterinsurgency practices in the southern borderland, home to the greater part of the Malay-Muslim minority. Ruth Streicher argues that counterinsurgency practices mark the southern population as the racialized, religious, and gendered other of the Thai, which contributes to producing Thailand as an imperial formation: a state formation based on essentialized difference between the Thai and their others. Through a genealogical approach, Uneasy Military Encounters addresses broad conceptual questions of imperial politics in a non-Western context: How can we understand imperial policing in a country that was never colonized? How is "Islam" constructed in a state that is officially secular and promotes Buddhist tolerance? What are the (historical) dynamics of imperial patriarchy in a context internationally known for its gender pluralism? The resulting ethnography excavates the imperial politics of concrete encounters between the military and the southern population in the ongoing conflict in southern Thailand.