Read-Ka-Ben อ่านกะเบน, Pridi Banomyong Library, Bangkok (2026)

19/04/2026

Imagining Malaya: Peranakan Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Belonging at the End of Empire, 1945–1957
by Bernard Z Keo
Open Access book for free download here:
https://academic.oup.com/book/59235?searchresult=1

history, political science, imperialism, nationalism, ASEAN studies, Malaysia, Singapore

Assistant Professor Bernard Keo teaches international history and politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland.

His book discusses the Peranakan Chinese, an ethnic group defined by their genealogical descent from the first waves of Southern Chinese settlers to maritime Southeast Asia, known as Nanyang; British, Portuguese, and Dutch colonial ports in the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Archipelago, as well as Singapore.

During British colonial rule in Malaya, the Peranakan Chinese tried to imagine an inclusive, multi-ethnic nation as a way of integrating Malay society.

A mixed community due to intermarriage between Chinese migrants and indigenous Malays, Peranakan political activists sought to extend citizenship rights to anyone living in Malaya, regardless of race, class, or religion.

This vision was based on a cosmopolitan sense of identity and inclusivity in the Malayan nation.

The Peranakan viewpoint promoted reconnecting Malacca, Penang, and Singapore as part of the Federation of Malaya or a reconstituted Straits Settlements.

As Malaysia and Singapore as they made the transition from colonies to nations, the Peranakan were vocal proponents of independence.

In 1948, they even voted that the island-state of Penang should detach itself politically from the Federation of Malaya and re-establish the Straits Settlements as a self-governing entity within the British Empire.

The proposal was advanced by leading members of the Peranakan Chinese community and their allies in Penang’s multi-ethnic population.

It was the result of a decades-long campaign by Peranakan activists to make their voice heard in Malayan politics.

Despite its threat to the Malayan nation-state, the Penang secession movement, as it was known, is mostly unmentioned in the historical literature on Malaya’s path to nationhood.

The Peranakan Chinese community viewpoint did not lead to the hoped-for plural society in Malaya.

It remained a visionary ideal of a future society.
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19/04/2026

Automatic Imitation
edited by Oliver Genschow and Emiel Cracco
Open Access book for free download here:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-62634-0

psychology, sociology, allied health sciences, consumer studies, philosophy, anthropology

Professor Oliver Genschow teaches psychology at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany.

Dr. Emiel Cracco is a researcher in psychology and neuroscience based at Ghent University, Belgium.

Their book explains that studies show that people automatically imitate many different behaviors, including facial expressions, language characteristics, emotions, postures, gestures, and simple movements.

In this way, automatic imitation underlines that seeing actions may facilitate doing comparable actions.

Over the past two decades, publications show that this imitative behavior fulfills an important social function by unifying humans in creating feelings of affiliation and encouraging social interactions.

Imitative behavior was identified in the 1700s when the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith suggested that spontaneous imitation may be seen as a form of sympathy.

Despite longstanding theoretical interest, thorough investigation of imitative behavior did not occur until the twentieth century.

In 1933, Clark L. Hull, a Yale University psychologist, established that participants unintentionally copied the body movements of an experimenter during a series of psychological tests.

In 1962, Albert Bandura, a Stanford University professor of social science in psychology, linked imitative behavior to learning from others in society.

Around the year 2000, it was shown in social psychological experiments that participants touched their heads more often when another person who was present touched their head, compared to when the other person moved their foot.

Conversely, participants moved their foot more often, when the other person moved their foot, compared to when they touched their head.

These findings on automatic imitation have inspired new investigations in social and cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience.

Being mimicked by others has positive as well as negative social consequences, with children liking to be imitated more than adults generally do.

Some scholars have assumed that imitation might be useful in psychotherapy, but this idea remains unproven.
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19/04/2026

Entire of Itself? Towards an Environmental History of Islands
edited by Milica Prokić and Pavla Šimková
Open Access book for free download here:
https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2023/10/13/entire-of-itself/

history, geography, political science, environmental studies, anthropology, biology, ecology, literature, archaeology

Dr. Milica Prokić is an environmental historian affiliated with The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

Dr. Pavla Šimková is a historian at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU Munich) in Bavaria, Germany.

Their book addresses the field of island studies, or nissology, a term derived from Greek words for island (nisos) and study.

Anthropologists see islands as laboratories of natural and societal processes and as sites fostering cultural peculiarities.

Biologists and ecologists study them as living museums of evolution and miniaturized models of the world.

Literary researchers underline the importance of islands in the human cultural imagination.

For historians, islands have been essential in imperial expansion throughout history, as expendable grounds where new weapons could be tested, and as sites for extracting natural resources.

Political scientists note that islands have served as prisons and places of exile, punishment, and internment, because of their natural setting.

To understand why an island became a penal colony, atomic test site, sugarcane plantation or tourist destination, we must examine its geology, topography, climate, and ecology.

There have been relatively few studies on the environmental history of islands.

If islands are seen as concentrative samples of environments and societies, then how humans interact with nature on them can be highly informative.

While some islands and island groups benefit from some form of nature protection, others have undergone extraction of natural resources and environmental transformation.

Islands have been seen as the secluded and outside the center of things.

Because of this distance, mainland cultures have considered islands as suitable for use as waste dumps, weapons-testing sites, and prison camps.

In other cases, the same remoteness has left islands as unpolluted venues.

From a geological, ecological or archaeological perspective, island boundaries can be less clearly defined.
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12/04/2026

Investing in Health and Wellbeing: When Prevention is Better than Cure
by Christopher Dye
Open Access book for free download here:
https://academic.oup.com/book/59012

allied health sciences, education, economics, sociology

Professor Christopher Dye teaches epidemiology at the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom.

His book points to the paradox that good health is universally valued, but little is invested in protecting and promoting it.

Instead, budgets are devoted to treating illness.

Professor Dye writes:

“Health promotion and disease prevention are given low priority, inside and outside the health sector.”

Public health still largely reacts to problems that are already present, rather than proactively trying to prevent them.

It is organized around the response to specific illnesses and injuries rather than around the means of protecting and enhancing health.

In 2019, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, budgeted less than three percent of money spent directly on health to prevention.

By contrast, over ninety percent was spent on inpatient and outpatient services, medical goods, and long-term care.

Internationally, 116 countries allocated an average of less than four percent of national health expenditure to prevention in 2019.

Yet across OECD countries in 2019, studies show that almost two million deaths could have been avoided by prevention and public health measures.

Causes of preventable illness include environmental dangers such as polluted water and sanitation issues, disorders such as diabetes, and behavior, especially in terms of alcohol and to***co use and poor diet.

People fail to follow the rules of preventive medicine for behavioral, cultural, economic, environmental, and political reasons.

The author argues that increased funding for health promotion and disease prevention is a necessary first step to cope with the avoidable burden of ill-health.

Economically, prevention protects health services, since if fewer people are ill, there will be less expense for increasingly costly treatments, new medical technologies, and drugs.

He notes:

“Good health creates wealth for individuals and for whole communities, facilitating education, employment, income, and social status.”
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12/04/2026

Tea, Fragrance, and Music: Ephemeral Arts and the Formation of Scholar-Artist Communities in Northern Song China
by Kin Sum Li
Open Access book for free download here:
https://brill.com/display/title/63606

China, history, sociology, economics, cultural studies

Associate Professor Kin Sum Li teaches Chinese, history, religion, and philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University.

His book discusses a Chinese culture of tea making and drinking, accompanied by music played on the guqin or zither and the burning of fine fragrances as cultural, economic, and artistic constructs.

This practice became well-established during the Northern Song dynasty.

In China, authors and readers of texts on tea included emperors, officials, scholars, and merchants, members of every political, social, cultural, and economic elite class.

While today, fragrances are usually generated by applying perfume, in the past, cultural elites in China preferred burning aromatic substances such as frankincense or sandalwood, to generate pleasing fragrances.

They treated this as an art form and published texts to promote the cultural and artistic significance of producing fragrances.

Dr. Li argues that creating fragrances is not recognized as an art form by traditional art history, but it may be seen as such in the larger global context.

Cultural elites in China welcomed aromatic substances imported from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

The substances were costly, due to their rarity and high transportation costs.

More recently, burning of aromatic substances in China has been limited mainly to religious practice.

Unlike the global acceptance of the cultures of tea and aromatic substances, the music of the guqin or zither has been an art form distinct to East Asia.

Tea became culturally, economically, and artistically related to the production of fragrance and music in communities of traditional scholar-artists of the Northern Song dynasty.

They were momentary practices insofar as their action and effect were short-lived.

The artistic creations were transitory and quickly consumed, making the retrieval of historical records challenging.

Yet experience of them helped to build lasting cultural memories and beliefs that helped to form communities.
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12/04/2026

Mapping World Anglophone Studies: English in a World of Strangers
edited by Pavan Kumar Malreddy and Frank Schulze-Engler
Open Access book for free download here:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003464037

education, English as a foreign language, literature, sociology, linguistics, political science

Dr. Pavan Malreddy teaches English literature at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, where Emeritus Professor Frank Schulze-Engler taught new anglophone literatures and cultures.

Their book explores how today, English literature and culture are appearing in parts of the world not traditionally considered anglophone such as Vietnam, Cuba, the Arab world, the Balkan region, Angola, Algeria, and Belize.

There are new areas of exchange between anglophone literature and languages such as Hindi, Swahili, Santhali, and Ojibway.

On platforms such as social media and Netflix, English participates in resistance involving women, indigenous populations, and other minorities.

Historians often write about the colonial and imperial legacies of English to understand the complex adaptations of the language in the contemporary world.

However, in the Global South and other regions, English is not just the language of past tyranny.

Instead, anglophone culture helps to achieve deeper insight into the colonial past and the postcolonial era today.

This anglophone culture involves idioms and metaphors to form cultural networks as well as digital pathways between protestors.

The editors suggest that using anglophone metaphors and symbols in places where English is not the native language allows users to maintain a certain distance, clarity, and objectivity in the discussion of world crises today.

For example, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a Kenyan author and academic, observed that English authors such as William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens inspired him, but he criticized the hierarchy that ranked English and other European languages above ones from Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world.

The Indian political theorist Kancha Ilaiah has noted that English language books on social injustice are often more outspoken than texts on similar topics in such languages as Telugu.

English has been exalted to a language of liberation, years after it was used during centuries of British colonization to oppress populations.
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05/04/2026

The Economics of Big Science 2.0: Essays by Leading Scientists and Policymakers
edited by Johannes Gutleber and Panagiotis Charitos
Open Access book for free download here:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-60931-2

economics, science, business, education, futurology, digital management, political science

Dr. Johannes Gutleber develops strategies and sustainable implementation scenarios for future research infrastructure projects at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Dr. Panagiotis Charitos is the editor of Accelerating News, a newsletter for the accelerator research and development community in nuclear science and technology, based at CERN.

Their book argues that societal benefits results from public funding of research activity that is driven by curiosity and does not appear to have immediate practical applications.

They cite many examples of scientific research which does not address immediate societal challenges or urgent needs, but produced wealth and long-term sustainability.

It is understandable that funding committees may feel safer in sponsoring applied research and targeted investments to address climate change, advance microelectronics, increase the effectiveness of battery-based energy storage, or develop space technology.

Yet scientific results may evolve slowly over several decades with effects that only become visible after several generations.

Many successful high-tech companies ultimately resulted from initial public funding for scientific research motivated by curiosity, rather than aiming for specific results.

Among examples of this paradox are Google, Xerox, and BioNTech, which produced one of the first effective vaccines against Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Another prominent case is the private company Epic Games, now generating an annual revenue between 5 and 6 billion US dollars.

In numerous instances, the underlying science may have differed substantially from the innovation result and was not limited to the primary subject matter.

In other words, scientists were looking for one thing and found something else entirely.

Gradually gained knowledge through publicly funded scientific research is always at the origin of technology development and eventually also leads to disruptive developments or discoveries.

Major innovation also happens because of development and application of new methodologies that are not at all related to the specific original challenge.
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05/04/2026

Social Processes of Online Hate
edited by Joseph B. Walther and Ronald E. Rice
Open Access book for free download here:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003472148/

law, criminology, information technology, digital management, media and communication studies, sociology, ethics

Professors Joseph Walther and Ronald Rice teach communication at the University of California Santa Barbara, California, the United States of America.

Their book suggests that hate messages on social media are not individual acts, not uncorrelated, and not disorganized, but part of various social processes and systems.

According to the editors, people produce racist, sexist, and harassing messages, not mainly
to harm victims.

Hate posters are motivated by engaging in collective behavior to:

• attract attention and admiration
• fit in
• advance a comforting, if deviant, virtual community
• entertain each other, and
• share in the fun of insulting other people.

It seems distasteful and misguided to think about this form of verbal terrorism as being a source of fun for those who do it.

Yet research has shown that this is clearly a decisive motivator.

The spreading of online hate is not necessarily something that derives from an individual’s inner racism or personality.

Instead, the gratifications sought by these offenders might appeal to anyone whose ego is threatened, who could use a scapegoat, who is otherwise lacking financially or emotionally, or who is afraid of being replaced, contaminated, or eliminated.

Online abusers find that taking the role of a victim, or a potential victim among others, is
comforting.

And that being clever or scary gets them liked by others who are willing to repeat their statements by retweeting, friending, and following.

Hate speech is always with us, but the internet accelerated its development.

Previously, single voices expressing hatred were often ignored.

Today, the internet provides access to an extensive audience of fellow haters.

Online hatred may be seen as a form of sport that requires no training or ability, the team members are mutually supportive, and thousands of spectators applaud the players with likes and hearts and upvotes
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05/04/2026

Former Extremists: Preventing and Countering Violence
edited by Gordon Clubb and others
Open Access book for free download here:
https://academic.oup.com/book/59011

political science, history, sociology, anthropology, peace studies

Dr. Gordon Clubb lectures on international security at the University of Leeds, the United Kingdom.

His book observes that internationally, many initiatives to prevent violence have used or been led by former extremists and former combatants (formers).

In the context of programs aiming to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE), some former far-right or Islamist extremists have spoken in schools and been enlisted as mentors to help extremists exit their respective movement.

In some cases, former members of armed groups have taken active roles to prevent violence at conflict areas or have discussed with young people to oppose paramilitary arguments.

However, the involvement of formers is provocative and raises ethical questions.

In some cases, the individuals involved have committed crimes that have gone unpunished.

They may still hold some radical views, involvement might lead to their own reindoctrination, or they may appear to benefit from the work while the voices of victims are ignored.

Yet generally it is agreed that involving formers in violence prevention work adds perceived value and credibility to any program, although exactly how effective they are remains to be studied conclusively.

New initiatives involving or led by formers continue to emerge and grow.

Formers are involved in, or lead projects in Southeast Asia, North and South America, throughout Europe, and in the Middle East.

This book describes their diverse work across a range of contexts by examining their role in P/CVE and peacebuilding.

There is an unspoken assumption that formers are more believable as messengers to target hard-to-reach audiences such as extremists or combatants.

Involvement may also help formers convince themselves that nonviolence is the best approach to any social or political conflict.

Yet some studies suggest that it is uncertain whether formers are effective, and the unintended results of interventions involving them are little understood.
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29/03/2026

Frans Hals: Iconography – Technique – Reputation
edited by Norbert Middelkoop and Rudi Ekkart
Open Access book for free download here:
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048566075/frans-hals

art, history, European culture, sociology

Dr. Norbert Middelkoop is Senior Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings at the Amsterdam Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Dr. Rudolf Ekkart is former director of the Netherlands Institute for Art History.

Their book is an up-to-date look at the Dutch portrait painter Frans Hals.

Hals, who lived in the 1600s, has been placed alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer among outstanding painters from the Netherlands.

Previously, Hals was more popular, since Vermeer did not produce many paintings, and Hals’ bright colors pleased viewers more than the dark canvases of Rembrandt.

Although he was well known as an artist, Hals struggled financially, mainly because of the large size of his family and the fact that few Dutch portraitists were well paid.

The idea that Hals’ difficulties had more to do with drinking and lack of discipline was first introduced by a biographer in the 1700s.

This image of Hals was derived from his paintings of other people drinking, but does not correspond with documents cited in this book.

Hals was also often misunderstood by critics in earlier years.

Because he used a lively brushstroke, some believed that Hals completed his pictures quickly.

Art historians who have examined his technique explain that he carefully planned all his painterly effects.

What a few observers have described as liveliness in Hals’ work was achieved with virtuoso talent, but also careful control.

In this way, Hals was able to convey the impression of different personalities in his portraits.

He was able to achieve this strong sense of individuality better than any other artist of his time, except perhaps Rembrandt.

In the 1700s, the English painter Joshua Reynolds praised in Hals’ work

“that strong-marked character of individual nature, which is so remarkable in his portraits, and is not found in an equal degree in any other painter.”
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29/03/2026

The Family in EU Law
edited by Marja-Liisa Öberg and Alina Tryfonidou
Open Access book for free download here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/family-in-eu-law/E9A373F3B45B00CB0BC13A38FF682AAA

law, sociology, gender studies, human rights, European history

Associate Professor Marja-Liisa Öberg teaches European Union (EU) law at Lund University, Sweden.

Assistant Professor Alina Tryfonidou teaches EU law and family law at the University of Cyprus.

Their book observes that the interaction of law and the family are highly important to society and to individuals.

If two or more persons are seen as making up a family, they may obtain many significant rights and privileges.

Persons who are denied the status of a family are refused the same rights and privileges and often face additional stigma that is associated with not receiving approval as a familial relationship.

Despite its importance, there is no official or universal definition for the concept of ‘family’ either socially or legally.

The lack of one definition for the social construction of family as a basis for legal understanding of this term has inevitably impacted the development of family law.

Since the word family has limited legal meaning, legal texts instead use terms like marriage, parent, child, or descendant to decide whether someone may have rights or entitlements as a result of the relationship with another person.

Therefore, courts are more concerned with interpreting these terms than with determining the meaning of the idea of family.

Yet in many instances, persons acquire and maintain certain rights only through their status as a family member of someone else.

Because social and legal understandings of the family are directly influenced by the moral, religious, social, and political factors in each society, which vary, there is diversity in family law systems internationally.

Family law must adapt to societal changes and medical advances that affect the characteristics of today’s families.

So family law should have moveable boundaries, with goals that change over time to reflect and accommodate life experience of the families that it regulates.
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29/03/2026

Combining Work and Care: Carer Leave and Related Employment Policies in International Context
edited by Kate Hamblin and others
Open Access book for free download here:
https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/edcollbook-oa/book/9781447365723/9781447365723.xml

business, economics, allied health sciences, sociology, law, social planning

Professor Kate Hamblin teaches social policy at the University of Sheffield, the United Kingdom.

Her book compares national policies that enable workers to care for family members and friends while remaining in paid employment.

It focuses on new laws permitting temporary leave of absence from work so that employees may fulfil care responsibilities.

Nations examined include Japan, Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Aging populations and global trends in economic conditions have produced rising labor force participation rates, especially among women.

Internationally, although life expectancy is increasing, disability-free and healthy life expectancies have remained stable, increasing demand for care.

Health and long-term care systems are often described as being in crisis due to concerns about financial and social sustainability.

In this context, many governments try to minimize expected growth in health and care service expense.

Increasingly, national policies may rely on carers.

As a result, family members and friends are providing high levels of care.

These carers are considered background resources in welfare systems, but their own needs and well-being is often considered less urgent.

As numbers of working carers continue to grow rapidly in aging societies, paid work and care will be increasingly combined.

Many working carers experience negative financial, health and social results due to their double duties.
These issues threaten the sustainability of the care system.

Employers, other labor market stakeholders, and economies may be impacted.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) reports that, globally, 647 million people of working age are outside the labor force due to caring responsibilities.

Policies supporting working carers are seen as increasingly important by national governments and enterprises.

Policy makers and some employers have drawn attention to the need for guidance on how the evolving demands on carers may be reconciled with their participation in paid work.
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