This book is intended as a quick overview of contemporary Indonesia and, in some aspects, has been streamlined for ease of reading. In most cases, Indonesian names are rendered in standard modern spellings, even when their owners prefer the older Dutch-era renditions. Notably, the tj consonant becomes c, and the oe vowel becomes u. Monetary amounts are given in the US dollar equivalent at the exchange rate of the time, though at times of wild fluctuations—such as in 1997–8—this can produce wide variations. Again for ease of reading, attribution to sources is given in the text where possible, rather than in footnotes. Where the US embassy or its officials are cited as sources, the material has been drawn from the vast cache of US diplomatic reports published by WikiLeaks in 2010–11.