Young Soeharto

When a reluctant President Sukarno gave Lt Gen Soeharto full executive authority in March 1966, Indonesia was a deeply divided nation, fractured along ideological, class, religious and ethnic lines. Soeharto took a country in chaos, the largest in Southeast Asia, and transformed it into one of the 'Asian miracle' economies—only to leave it back on the brink of ruin when he was forced from office thirty-two years later.Drawing on his astonishing range of interviews with leading Indonesian generals, former Imperial Japanese Army officers and men who served in the Dutch colonial army, as well as years of patient research in Dutch, Japanese, British, Indonesian and US archives, David Jenkins brings vividly to life the story of how a socially reticent but exceptionally determined young man from rural Java began his rise to power—an ascent which would be capped by thirty years (1968–98) as President of Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation on earth. Soeharto was one of Asia's most brutal, most durable, most avaricious and most successful dictators. In the course of examining those aspects of his character, this book provides an accessible, highly readable introduction to the complex, but dramatic and utterly absorbing, social, political, religious, economic and military factors that have shaped, and which continue to shape Indonesia.

"Written with Jenkins’s characteristic clarity and verve, and painstakingly sourced, it is an enthralling read. As the list of acknowledgements shows, he managed to speak with most of the key surviving figures from the Soeharto era before they died." – Inside Story AU  "Young Soeharto: The Making of a Soldier, 1921-1945 is a masterpiece. At once comprehensive and compelling, the biography will be a delight to serious scholars and armchair historians alike. While the massive volume runs 503 pages comprising 300 pages of text and over 150 pages of footnotes, bibliography and glossary, it also contains nearly 20 pages of photographs and is beautifully printed. The reader is carried easily on the Jenkins’ smooth prose, sharpened by the Australian journalist’s decades as a reporter and editor of note. [...] Jenkins is masterly in his treatment of the behavior of both Japanese and Indonesians as defeat loomed for the former, and includes information from interviews with former Japanese soldiers who were Soeharto’s superiors and remembered him well. Indeed, another one of the book’s strengths is the knowledge gleaned from Japanese sources." – The Jakarta Post

David Jenkins, who graduated in Law (1965) and Arts (1967) from Melbourne University, was a foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia for many years. He was a co-winner of a Walkley Award for his contribution to the Herald's coverage from Jakarta and East Timor during the violent 1999 referendum on independence.