Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens is the type of book that “serious” foreign scholars of Southeast Asian studies often dismiss and sometimes even resent. Having spent several years studying languages, living in “the field,” negotiating archives, attending rituals and conferences, seeing the rise and fall of governments, finding rare sources, learning local jokes, and making friends, scholars like me and others teaching at universities or working in museums, publishing companies, think-tanks, and archives sometimes lump non-area specialist writers with the retired white male tourists attracted to Thailand's exotic reputation, warm weather, cold beer, and deceptive accessibility. To many long-term and committed foreign scholars of Thailand, these writers are opportunists at best and charlatans at worst. Hundreds of books have come out over the past century that were written by white male (and occasionally female) tourists and travelers describing adventurous treks in the jungle, peaceful afternoon strolls around monasteries, or wild nights in Bangkok bars. Thailand, it would seem from any time spent in the country, has a lot of older white men with nothing to do but drink or meditate, shop or write bad books.

I dismissed Masked as probably belonging to this category before even opening it. Straddling my high horse, I opened to the bibliography to look for Thai sources, which, as I expected, were nearly nonexistent. The bibliography surprised me in one way though—it was long. Clearly, Alfred Habegger had gone through archives in the United States, England, Singapore, and Ireland, and had consulted nineteenth-century letters, newspapers (mostly in English and French), and travelers’ reports. He had scoured Leonowens's published and unpublished works. There was only one Thai-language book listed among the hundreds of entries, and it was by the well-known historian Anake Nawigamune. While I was impressed with the extent of largely English-language sources, my dismissiveness was proven correct—the author could not read Thai and had not spent any serious time in Thai archives, libraries, and bookstores. Then, remaining skeptical, I read the dust jacket and learned that Habegger was a retired professor of English from the University of Kansas (a decidedly non-exotic place that probably drove him to dreams of visiting Thailand, I assumed) and had previously published biographies of Emily Dickinson and Henry James. Clearly this man had no experience in Thai studies and, in my mind, had no right to write a book on the subject. My mind was taken over with my own self-importance.

I pressed on, now determined to write a scathing review (something I have avoided in my career, knowing my mother, in her wisdom, would not approve). How dare Habegger waltz in to my field and write a book without any experience in Thailand? I read the acknowledgments, strangely placed at the end of the book, and my mind started to change. Habegger's son had lived in Thailand for many years. He admitted that his “sixty-four-year-old brain” had trouble learning Thai, but he had taken an intensive summer course at the famous SEASSI program in Madison, Wisconsin. He only visited Thailand and Singapore for a brief time, but sought out the help of Thai scholars. More importantly, when I finally started reading the book, I realized that Habegger is an excellent writer. The book is in-depth, well-researched (since it is a story about Anna Leonowens and she only spent a total of five and a half years of her life in Thailand, it requires primarily English-language sources), and compelling. I learned a great deal and realized that my knowledge of the story made famous by Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I was very limited. Habegger had me hooked and humbled.

He begins with irony. Anna Leonowens wrote the famous book The English Governess at the Siamese Court, which was published in 1870 with the help of New England abolitionists and wealthy intellectuals from the Shaw and Winthrop families. It was ironic because this woman long held up as the great white hope of Siam, who convinced King Mongkut (Rama IV) and his son and subsequent king, Chulalongkorn (Rama V) to abolish slavery, respect the intellectual contributions of women, and consider the virtues of democracy, was actually half-Indian and half-Welsh, and had never lived in England. Her tan skin, her New England friends and people who flocked to her numerous public speaking events assumed, was a result of time spent in the sun in the tropics. Leonowens hid her own Asian ethnicity to “pass” as white and represent the implicit superiority that her English-speaking audiences in the United States upheld as the saviors of the noble but misguided savages of Siam. Habegger tells how the story of this enlightened tutor and “principled English lady who had boldly stood up to” (p. 6) the King of Siam took on a life of its own during her life and long after her death in text, musical, and film.

The book then describes in crisp detail and flowing prose the actual truth of her life, her great story-telling ability, and the sociohistorical and cultural context that contributed to the rise of Leonowens's popularity. In telling the seemingly well-known story of Anna and the King, Habegger actually tells the story of a forward-thinking, yet deeply condescending New England brand of moral and intellectual superiority wrapped up in noble abolitionism and commitment to democracy. It shows both the strange American fascination with and suspicion of royalty of both the British and Siamese types.

Habegger undertook the research and has the story-telling skills himself to make the Indian and American lives of Leonowens as compelling as her time in the Siamese court. The sections called “Before Bangkok” and “After Bangkok” are where this book really makes a contribution not necessarily to Southeast Asian studies, but to the complex history of American Orientalism that persists to this day. Habegger teaches as much about the ways the popular view of Siam/Thailand has been constructed by those around Leonowens as he does about the truth of her own life. Long-term scholars of Thai studies might ignore or roll their eyes at this book and the audacity of this retired English professor, but this, I now think, would be a big mistake.