Firstly, I am what the author, Paul Handley, would call a 4th Generation Chakri. In fact, my family was mentioned in the book. Secondly, I am an American by birth and have been happy living here by choice. My point is that I can take a look at this book from a more global perspective. I must admit though that the most difficult part in the beginning was to overcome the unfortunate decision of Mr. Handley to address the king and the royal family by their first names. This clearly shows his own bias and personnal resentment of the subject of his book even though supposedly, this was an unbiased journalistic piece. Give me a break. His convenient excuse will be that he is not a Thai and more importantly an American so it is natural for him to have done that. I just have to say that even the U.S. Congress refers to the King as His Majesty. Indeed, in the book, he refers to the British royals as Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana.
None the less, if you are able to get over this, the book was hard to put down for me and quite rivetting. It was a good chronological summary of the modern Thai history. The gossip was of course what was rivetting. Like all gossips, there is probably some truth but one can not tell where the truth lies. For me personnally having missed the events that occurred early on due to age and the later events due to having moved to the U.S., the book was a fast read. Most of the incidents have been around the family gathering but it was a good review of the details none the less. As another reviewer had mentioned, if you are not somewhat familiar with Thai names and the major players, you have no reason to like this book or even be reading this review.
With regards to the major theme, that the king is a proponent of dhammocracy over democracy, I say "so what"? Mr. Handley's other poorly hidden bias was that the reader was to accept that U.S. democracy is inherently better (better for the U.S. but not necessarily for Thailand, as a friend of mine used to say and as we are learning in the MiddleEast now) for all and that for some unexplained reason, the king's support for dhammocracy is bad. He was, in fact, schizophrenic in his assessment of dhammocracy and by the end of the book pretty much changed his criticism of the monarchy to a lack of a strong succession plan. It is as if Mr. Handley wants us to believe that the king is different from other charismatic leaders such as Napolean or Jefferson or Bush or Welch or Gates in trying to gain allegiance, pass agendas, and pursue success the way they see them. On a positive note, his whole explanation and articulation of the dhammocracy theory were insightful and easily understood in my opinion. I enjoyed reading that as much as the gossip part.
In summary, if this book was called "Leadership Lessons from the Longest Reigning Monarch" and the private life gossips tuned down a bit, it would be a NY Times best seller. One can not deny that after reading this book one can conclude that King Bhumipol is a genius in the art of leading. We are constantly interested in how people like Jack Welch or Thomas Jefferson or George Bush or Bill Gates became successful. There are definitely many lessons on how King Bhumipol continues to be successful in this book although it is implicit that the author is criticising the methods. I must admit that I just do not see how an unknown journalist can criticise management method of one of the most successful leaders in modern history. The answer is he can not and this is why the book was supposedly just an unbiased commentary (A biased journalist? You're kidding, right?). As it is, it will be popular with people who enjoy reading gossip (nothing wrong with that) about the Thai royal family.
Again, given my background I couldn't put it down and for that I gave it a 4 stars.