A Brief History Of Bali: Piracy, Slavery, Opium and Guns: The Story of an Island Paradise

A cogent presentation of Bali in brief; a great first book on Bali; highly recommended. Nice inclusion of historical photographs as well.As anticipated by the title, the book included a too-brief 17-page epilogue of Bali in the Twenty-First Century. This was rather one-dimensional, lacked substance and came across as a hurried after-thought.Hoping Tuttle will sponsor works in many countries that focus on the most recent 25 years of history in each country - these would be excellent companion volumes to their "Brief History' series.

A really interesting and absorbing history of this beautiful island.

Book was a bit slow at the start, but became much more interesting

Bali is being rapidly transformed by the tourism industry and will see a lot of cultural change driven by Western visitors over the next few decades. I was on vacation in Bali and got this book to learn more about this beautiful island. Most of the information were gathered from the colonial-era Dutch archives. The book primarily focuses on the last 500 years of the island, but has a short introduction about the earlier centuries when the first peoples landed. It was definitely an interesting read.

An old-fashioned but quite interesting book about Balis history. Seen a bit from a European perspective, but perhaps it is because of the lack of sources.