rector later reversed this decision and ordered the university bookshop to sell the book. In October 2011, Thai-born American Joe Gordon was sentenced to two and a half years in prison by a Bangkok judge for defaming the royal family by translating sections of the book into Thai and posting them online. The judgement caused international concern as Gordon had published the extracts several years previously while living in the US and was detained only after returning to Thailand in May 2011 to seek medical treatment. Speaking after the verdict, Gordon said: "I am an American citizen and what happened was in America." Later, he added in Thai, "In Thailand they put people in prison even if they don't have proof." In July 2012, Gordon was pardoned by the king in advance of the Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra's meeting with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Dueling biographers The Handley book was published six years after the first biography of King Bhumibol, The Revolutionary King by William Stevenson. Stevenson was chosen by Bhumibol himself after reading his previous book A Man Called Intrepid, a highly controversial and hagiographic biography of the Canadian Spymaster William Stephenson which had been widely criticized and discredited by veterans and historians of the CIA, MI6, and Canadian Intelligence. Despite this, Bhumibol allegedly became obsessed with the book and personally translated it from English to Thai and had the Army and the Postal Service distribute thousands of copies. Handley commented on Stevenson's book, pages 437-439 of The King Never Smiles: Stevenson reviewed the Handley book in the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal Online (16 June 2006) Critical reception International reception The book has had a generally positive reception among international critics and scholars. The New York Review of Books called it, "one of the most important books on Thailand to appear in English." It further noted that, "The originality of Handley's book lies in his tough but I think fair-minded analysis of the revival of royal authority under King Bhumibol." In a review in the New Left Review, Duncan McCargo, a lecturer from the University of Leeds who wrote several articles on the "network monarchy" of Bhumibol and his proxies, called The King Never Smiles an "important book," that was, "fluently written and grounded in very considerable research." McCargo said that while Handley's account, "draws on insights into the Thai monarchy