The Jakarta Method
Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Quotes

“A radical new history of the United States abroad.”—Wall Street Journal

"Excellent...anchors itself in a history most Americans never learned or would rather forget."
—Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post

"The Jakarta Method is a must-read to better understand how the U.S. intelligence apparatus became what it is today, and how it's ravaged so many other countries along the way."
—GQ

"Bevins gives a concise account of how US-supported carnage in Indonesia inspired other countries to unleash their own murderous suppression of left-wing movements. By focusing on Indonesia and nations not aligned with either the United States or the Soviet Union, he goes beyond the typical Cold War history of arms races and intrigue....As Bevins effectively describes, we are still living in the world created by these anti-communist purges....[His] account raises necessary questions. Did the anti-communist mania of the 20th century make the world any safer? And if so, for whom?"—Foreign Policy

"Bevins is not the first to note that the Cold War frequently burned hot in the Third World, but he excels at showing the human costs of that epic ideological struggle."
—The New Republic

"The Jakarta Method dismantles and re-positions the American mythos, similar to two recent Pulitzer Prize winners: Nikole Hannah-Jones's The 1619 Project and Greg Grandin's The End of the Myth.... The Jakarta Method is a devastating critique of US hypocrisy during the Cold War, and a mournful hypothetical of what the world might have looked like if Third World movements had succeeded."
—Los Angeles Review of Books

"Riveting....As a polemic, The Jakarta Method is never anything less than conscientious and persuasive, but Bevins's book truly takes flight as a work of narrative journalism, tracing the history of America's violent meddling in Southeast Asia and Latin America through the stories of those it brutalized."
—Jacobin

"[The Jakarta Method] sheds a welcome light on the crimes that took place in Indonesia, a history largely forgotten in the West...but it also asks the fundamental question of why America aided such atrocities... Bevins persuasively argues for his country's blanket anticommunism as a kind of zealotry, an irrational pull with origins in the foundation of the United States."
—Times Literary Supplement

"Exceptional...If Indonesia is counted as a 'win' for the pro-regime change crowd, the idea of promoting regime change is absolutely bankrupt and should never be employed again."—The American Conservative

"Trenchant....powerful....[Bevins] translates the findings of complex scholarly accounts into smooth and readable, if often heartbreaking, prose."
—Boston Review