A Brief History of Indonesia
Sultans, Spices, and Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of Southeast Asia's Largest Nation

My review was based on what it says on the cover, as a book covering 'brief history' - and it did a pretty good job at that. It is an intentionally 'brief' history, but even for Indonesians there are definitely stuff not covered in our 'standard version' of history lessons in middle / high school. Th......more

The Rakai Pikatans of Indonesian history There once lived a man named Rakai Pikatan. He was the man who puts an end to the mighty Sailendra dynasty in Java, and in the year 856 he ordered his men to build a temple that match Sailendra's masterpiece, the Borobudur. The temple has since been known as t......more

A model introductory history, which gives a very bird's-eye view, without talking down to you at all. No doubt if I knew anything about Indonesia before reading it, I would be grumpy about omissions, but luckily for Hannigan, I knew almost nothing, except what I learned from reading the recently rel......more

I'm glad I finally read something about Indonesia. But this was an outsider account focused on foreign occupation and the ruthless men who carried it out. No quotes from locals, no exploration of culture, architecture, food or even terrain. Will get you up to speed on the governance of Indonesia and......more

This was a great overview of the history of Indonesia. I read this before (and during) my travels to Indonesia and I felt it added a lot to my knowledge of where I was. I can't speak to whether it is biased or not since I have only read a little about the history outside this book, but it seemed ver......more