Patterns and Illusions: Thai History and Thought.

In Memory of Richard B. Davis. Canberra: The Richard Davis Fund and the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 1992. 342 pages. Map, figures, line drawings, references, index. ISBN 0-7315-1408-4.

Patterns and Illusions: Thai History and Thought, a collection of essays on various aspects of Thai culture, was published in memory of the American anthropologist B. Davis, who died in 1981 at the early age of 38. I was acquainted with Davis when he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand during the late 1960s, and helped him publish his first book, A Northern Thai Reader (1970), which has since become a standard work in the field of northern Thai studies. His next book, Muang Metaphysics: A Study of Northern Thai Myth and Ritual, published posthumously in 1984, also demonstrates his outstanding scholarship regarding the northern Thai …