The loud (but lost) American | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

REVIEW

In print, the name of Jim Thompson is rarely far away from the word "legend". The outline of his life is well known. He arrived in Bangkok at the tail end of the Second World War as part of the proto-CIA. He gained a reputation as a host, bon viveur, aesthete and art collector. He started a glamorous silk business, that still bears his name, and built a house that remains a major tourist attraction. He disappeared off the face of the earth in 1967, providing the mystery which is essential for any good legend.

The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War By Joshua Kurlantzick John Wiley & Sons Inc, New Jersey, 2011. Hardcover, 272 pp. Available at Kinokuniya and Asia Books, 825 baht

Joshua Kurlantzick, a political analyst of Southeast Asia, has given us a portrait of Thompson that is both deeper and darker by setting the man into a context culled from recent scholarship on the Cold War era in the US and Southeast Asia.