Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony » (1st Edition)

"This book is both analytically daring and historically informative. I know of no work of colonial history, for Southeast Asia or elsewhere, that is comparable in its scope or power to illuminate--not to mention the zest and wit it brings to a potentially dry topic. There a many intriguing insights, startling images, and profound interpretations."--Mary Margaret Steedly, Harvard University

Eric Tagliacozzo - Journal of Asian Studies

Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony is a wonderfully moody book. Moody, because it aims at capturing the aura of the Dutch East Indies in the last seventy-five years of colonial rule almost as much as it attempts to tell a critical, historical story. Wonderful, because it succeeds at this project better than any other book that I have read about this particular time and place. One feels as if time travel has been accomplished by the time that the last page is reached. . . . We do not so much analyze the world of this Dutch colony from the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century as we live in it for three hundred pages. . . . It really should be read by anyone who cares about Indonesia.