This is an odd book. An extensive and sometimes annotated bibliography, it is not a book in the sense of a narrative. However, if treated as a book in the traditional sense it leads the reader through a broad spectrum of feelings of amazement, curiosity and desire: amazement about the sheer volume, richness and detail of theliterature on Batavia/Jakarta; curiosity about the contents of certain publications or series of publications with attractive titles; and a feeling of desire immediately to begin an investigation into one of the appealing subjects stumbled upon while leafing through. The bibliography contains over 5000 titles classified into 42 broad subject categories. The vast majority of the publications consists of books, but the number of articles is also very substantial. Most of these titles (3500) were produced after 1950. The larger part of the publications are written in Indonesian, Dutch, and to a lesser extent English. But also publications in such languages as French, Chinese, German, Japanese, Russian, and many others were listed. Indexes of authors, of subjects and of titles make this bibliography easily accessible.

Over 5,000 entries arranged in four parts. Part I comprises reference and general works to provide a guide to information on Southeast Asia. Part II provides the setting of space and time. Part III features the people and Part IV the many facets of culture and society — language; ideas, beliefs, values; institutions; creative expression; and social and cultural change. Within each section, the arrangement is geographical, beginning with Southeast Asia as a whole followed by the various countries in alphabetical order.