Indonesia Books

Errington strikes again. In this book Errington repeats his sophomoric fallacies of ignoring all established theories on the subject. His own theories entangled in his convoluted and verbose prose seem to exist more to contradict the foundations of anthropological though such as Steven Pinker's, than to offer intelligent and reasonable alternatives. Academia is not a sandbox, and Errington should stop kicking over big kids' sandcastles.

The Javanese have great pride in their language which for some people it is considered as the language of the feudalism. Not being able to speak the appropriate Javanese especially to the elders is embarassing: a Javanese should speak good Javanese. But now, the national language has caused great change. The author has made thorough studies regarding it. The book will make a comprehensive reference for researchers and scholars interested in the field of language shift. There is no such book that gives a full description about the language shift from Javanese to Indonesian.

The Spice Island voyage is parallel story for the
authories sailing experience in the spice island
and of the 1800 century Alfred Wallace.
It's a facinating tale of two eras and how socially
and environmentally the old and new world are
much the same but changed in many ways. The book
is well written with references to Alfred Wallace's
written submission to Darwin about the orgin of the species.
Evidence is given that Wallace may have been the
major contributor to the general theory that species
evolved because of the environment.

The modern day adventurers build and sail an boat
of an old Indonesian design. The voyage follows the
route of Alfred Wallace who sailed the same waters years
earlier. There is a sad message of environmental
destruction caused by the need of Indonesians to survive.
The book is stimulating and created a want to read more
of Tom Severin books

Brian Tyhy

I bought this book to read about Maluku (the "Spice Islands"), one of my favourite regions in the World, but instead found myself reading far too much about the author's obsession with Alfred Wallace, whose voyages he is trying to follow.
While he does give a description of places few other recent travelogues cover, these places are always viewed through his expectations of them based on Wallace's book which was written back in the 19th century. He keeps mourning how the Moluccas are not the same today as they were described by Wallace - hey, can one expect any place to remain unchanged for 150 years?
I spent well over a year travelling around these islands myself, and really think they would deserve to be appreciated for what they are now - still a beautiful and fascinating region with a rich natural environment and incredibly friendly people - rather just being treated as a background to raving about a naturalist who visited them a century and a half ago!
A more sympathetic and insightful description of Maluku is Ambon: Island of Spices by Shirley Deane.

Not a great resource , the Balinese have a bottomless amount of masks and characters, this book skims the surface, but does not have much information on characters who they are what part they play, type of dance they would be involved in, coffee table quick flip.

A relatively good book about the sea battles which resulted in the loss of the Netherlands East Indies to the Japanese Empire in 1942. During these battles, the U.S. lost the heavy cruiser Houston, several destroyers, and the first airplane carrier Langley. The losses to the Australians, Dutch, and British were more heavy. The plum target for the Japanese were the oil of the Indies and the rich island of Java. These battles determined the fate of the Dutch Empire in Asia and placed a threat to Australia.
One thing I liked about this book, which I felt lacked in some of the other battle books is the relative strength of the Allies versus the Japanese Empire. Thomas spent a large amount of page space covering this and why the Allies failed in this crucial battle.
I gave this book an average rating, since the style of writing by Thomas was not page turning. The battles were detailed, but no personal experiences were written into them. One faced why the ABDA forces failed and the Japanese won.

This was the only book I could get my hands on before my trip. The plates are good but incomplete. Many birds I saw were not even covered in this book. It's organized taxonomically and the descriptions are pretty good, but I try to ID from a picture, then I read a detailed description. It is a small hardcover book, so it is easy to carry.

From the Introduction:
This book is designed to give the layman an introduction to each bird family, and by describing one or more birds from each, enable him to identify most of the birds that can be found readily in the various habitats of Java and Bali. There are colour illustrations of 112 birds, and text references to at least 120 more. A checklist at the back tabulates 433 species on the Java and Bali lists. Once the reader has developed sufficient interest to compare his own findings with this list, he will need to obtain a more detailed field guide. The list is not fully comprehensive, as there are some 50 additional species which reach the islands only rarely, as migrants off-course or as oceanic wanderers, and these are not included.

The "Field Guide to the Birds of Java and Bali" by John MacKinnon was recommended to me while I was there and is supposed to be the "most comprehensive" field guide of this area.

although this is a landmark in that it is the very first book published on birds of sulawesi, it is incomplete and rather amatuerish. the illustrations are fairly good and the text is okay, but a book like this should list and descrtibe all the birds that occur on sulawesi, endemic (which there are nearly 100) and widespread. There is no mantion of the sulawesi drongo Dicrurus montanus or the Lompobattang Flycatcher (Ficedula bonthiana. the style seems as though it was intended for children rather than serious birdwatchers.

Being the only guide to this fascinating region is the major merit of this book. It is quite strong on background information and photos (many of which look decidedly staged though), but its use as a travel guide is more limited. Unlike many other Periplus guides, this was written by a single author who simply describes most places as his personal travelogue - and his travels took place many years ago.
Nor are many places described - apart from the major (but boring) coastal cities usually only one or two region is described for all of Kalimantan's huge provinces.
That is still more than the coverage of Kalimantan in general Indonesia guides though, so if you are really interested in Kalimantan, this book is still worth getting. Just don't expect too much from it - there is a lot more to explore out there!

One of the most comprehensive personal narratives of the Japanese/Indo POW experience relayed through the eyes of a young Indo woman.

This type of narrative is normally read by those with a specific interest in the Indo experience of Japanese occupation, and this one is very satisfying in the detail it gives of what happened to those captured, those left behind, the survivors and the participants in the war drama.

It would have benefitted from having an editor tighten the story, a spell check and a smaller font, but for content and story line it was really enlightening about the period in question, which is why I searched it out and read it.

The reality is there is little information for this part of the world. This is good information, but its not great and it does lack in certain areas, I don't know of a better book so I'd reccomend it, but do lots of homework before you go the information changes quickly.

This book remains perhaps the most comprehensive overview of the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago to this date. Also included are the peoples of Madagascar and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
The major ethnic groups of each region are described separately.
Unfortunately it is now a bit dated, but until a more up to date work is written on the topic, this book remains a very valuable source of information.