by Graham Allison, Roert D. Blackwill and Ali Wyne. Foreword by Henry A. Kissinger
Belfer Center Studies in International Security, 2013

When Lee Kuan Yew speaks, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and CEOs listen. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House; British prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair have recognized his wisdom; and business leaders from Rupert Murdoch to Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, have praised his accomplishments. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee’s voluminous published writings and presents them in an engaging question and answer format.

Lee offers his assessment of China’s future, asserting, among other things, that “China will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.” He affirms the United States’ position as the world’s sole superpower but expresses dismay at the vagaries of its political system. He offers strategic advice for dealing with China and goes on to discuss India’s future, Islamic terrorism, economic growth, geopolitics and globalization, and democracy. Lee does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on multiculturalism, the welfare state, education, and the free market. This little book belongs on the reading list of every world leader — including the one who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2013.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Tom Plate
Giants of Asia Series, 2010

Imagine the delight and challenge of entering into a one-on-one political and personal conversation with the founding father of modern Singapore. This is exactly the timely treat that awaits you in Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew. The first in the Giants of Asia series, this succinct, penetrating, richly detailed and candid book on Lee Kuan Yew represents the Asian legend s first extended conversation with a Western journalist. The result is often surprising, sometimes startling, occasionally humorous and never, ever dull. Enter into the mind of this controversial but internationally respected political leader and pioneer, through the eyes and ears of one of America’s leading journalists on Asia.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Lee Kuan Yew
Straits Times Press, 2011

This collection of essays offers insightful views of the origins of egalitarianism, political autonomy, and social solidarity among small-scale societies in Southeast Asia. Theoretically reflective and rich in ethnographic details, the volume provides a solid foundation for further research on social solidarity and small-scale societies.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Ang Cheng Guan
Routledge, 2012

Lee Kuan Yew, as the founding father of independent Singapore, has had an enormous impact on the development of Singapore and of Southeast Asia more generally. Even in his 80s he is a key figure who continues to exert considerable influence from behind the scenes. This book presents a comprehensive overview of Lee Kuan Yew’s strategic thought. It charts the development of Singapore over the last six decades, showing how Lee Kuan Yew has steered Singapore to prosperity and success through changing times. It analyses the factors underlying Lee Kuan Yew’s thinking, discusses his own writings and speeches, and shows how his thinking on foreign policy, security and international relations has evolved over time.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Lee Kuan Yew
Straits Times Press, 2011

In My Lifelong Challenge, we learn of the many policy adjustments and the challenges Lee Kuan Yew encountered – from Chinese language chauvinists who wanted Chinese to be the preeminent language in Singapore, from Malay and Tamil community groups fearing that Chinese was being given too much emphasis, from parents of all races wanting an easier time for their school-going children, from his own Cabinet colleagues questioning his assumptions about language. We learn of the pain of teachers forced to switch from teaching in Chinese to teaching in English almost overnight, and of students who were caught in the transition from a Chinese medium of instruction to an English one. My Lifelong Challenge is also the story of Lee’s own struggle to learn the Chinese language. This book describes vividly his steely determination to improve his Chinese and reclaim his Chinese heritage, right up to the present when he is well into his 80s. Lee distils his experiences of 50 years into eight precepts that he spells out at the end of his narrative.

Goodreads | Amazon

Return to Top

by John Onu Odihi
TraffordSG, 2012

In this new collection of poetry, Tribute to Brunei and Other Poems, the verses represent the synoptic capture of particular environments and incidents, as well as author John Onu Odihi’s reflection of them. Presented in a rich texture of imageries, the entries on Brunei, which form a major part of the book, portray a beautiful and peaceful country where modernity and tradition blend to form a harmonious socio-cultural environment. Odihi’s depiction of the serenity of Brunei’s pristine environment in an increasingly browning world and the vivacity of cultural life in the Abode of Peace can whet your appetite for a visit to the sultanate. Through poems such as “Programme Me” “Heed the Call” and “Let’s Help Each Other” Odihi gives cogent reasons for the celebration of human diversity and relinquishment of bigotry, prejudice, and such other vices that divide people. By extolling the virtues of hard work, unity, teamwork, sincerity, faithfulness, and commitment, Odihi’s Tribute to Brunei and Other Poems presents a strong voice in the ethics that are necessary for peace and human advancement. Bless You Always Brunei Darussalam Abode of Peace You are a jewel May the Sun of Righteousness Rise and shine upon you always Let there always be justice Let there always be goodness Within your borders let mercy flow May your inward beauty radiate Like diamond in the sun….

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Burgess Needle
Big Table Publishing Company, 2012

Burgess Needle’s poetry collection distills the essence of his two-year sojourn in Thailand as a Peace Corps cultural exchanger. Readers travel with him when he meets his new headmaster, witnesses a school flogging, and feels like an idiot as he attempts to explain the conjugation of “to be.” As his Thai language skills evolve, likewise does his consciousness as he thinks in terms of earning merits for next lifetime. Beneath the ever-oppressive glaring sun, Needle gradually experiences more commonalities, but when he is assigned to teach baseball he discovers its incompatibility with Thai life, for “No one wanted to cover first base, die and return prematurely as a dog or peacock.” Thus is this collection peppered with pathos, humor and endless delight. ~ Rebecca Leo, The Flaws That Bind Burgess Needle is our guide through this thoughtful collection of poems recounting the sights, sounds, tastes, and aromas of Thailand in the late 1960s. He warns of the danger of landmines and cobras, yet lures us in with the scent of kerosene wicks, cigarettes and whiskey, and I found myself hearing the language of villagers, the lowing of buffalo, and the chattering monkeys as war is waged in the distance. Thai Comic Books is Needle examining his own misgivings and good intentions as he explores the hopes and fears of the people he meets. ~ Jonathan K. Rice, Iodine Poetry Journal Exotic but not alienating, memoir-like but musical and unpredictable, Thai Comic Books reminds us that good poetry is both timeless and borderless. ~ Jefferson Carter, Get Serious

Goodreads | Amazon

by Roy Jacobstein
Triquarterly, 2008

Suffused with tenderness and humor, the poems in this collection take readers on a journey through emotions, across national boundaries, and even along the geographic timeline. The quick mind of author Jacobstein creates fluid verse that can take on the singular geography of his native Michigan or the story of an immigrant cab driver with ease. His elegant rhyme and clever rhythm are suited equally to an ode to the stegosaurus and to his many poems for his adopted daughter. He moves readers from Washington, D.C., to Delhi, from adolescence to fatherhood, and between heaven and earth. With its immersive voice and sensitive examinations, this set of verses retains its sense of wonder at all the beautiful hellos and good-byes that humans come to know well in their too-short lifetimes.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

edited by Paul Hoover and Nguyen Do
Universal Publishers, 2008

The poems in Black Dog, Black Night highlight an aspect of Vietnamese verse previously unfamiliar to American readers: its remarkable contemporary voices. Celebrating Vietnam’s diverse and thriving literary culture, the poems collected here combine elements of French Romanticism, Russian Expressionism, American Modernism, and native folk stories into a Vietnamese poetic tradition marked by vivid imagery, powerful emotions, and inventive forms. Included here are 17 postmodern and experimental Vietnamese poets, including the founding editor of Skanky Possum magazine, as well as American poets of Vietnamese descent.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Damien Sin
Angsana Books, 1998

This selection of 50 poems is thoroughly personal, culled from the experiences of the author’s life. Childhood memories are reflected in poems with a playful use of words. In other poems, you can hear the plaintive cry of the poor and outcast. Although dark and laced with despair, the verses in the collection always offer hope and salvation. The poems reflect a spectrum of the author’s experiences, including early childhood, National Service, the Oxford education, the heroin addiction and various spells of incarceration. Sin uses inspiration, colors and sounds to express nameless, complex emotions and breaks through the obstacles of culture and grammar to speak the secret language of the heart. The language of a Singapore that cries out from the margins.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

edited by Kennon Breazeale
Foundation for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities, 1999

“This truly impressive volume has stood the test of time and relevance as scholars and others alike continue to discuss the transnational maritime connections across Asia. One of the major accomplishments of this volume, however, is that rather than place the focus of the narrative on the rise of the European trading companies in the region during the Early Modern period, readers are rather encouraged to refocus on the rise of Ayutthaya as “one of the most powerful polities in this part of the world.” (Preface) The volume bears relevance to scholars of Thailand and Southeast Asia alone as it neatly traces the development of the second major Thai state, or rather state-like polity (after Sukhothai), in the region during its four hundred and sixteen year long apogee from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, through an assertion of the evidence mounted in this volume it is possible to assert that Ayutthaya bears not only regional but also global significance as the well protected hinterland location of this up-river polity provided a comfortable location of exchange between the Oceanic networks stretching from the Mediterranean through the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the straights of Melaka outward to the Vietnamese Coast, the South China Sea and Eastern Asia.”

From a review by William Noseworthy

Goodreads | Amazon

by Michael Smithies
Silkworm Books, 2000

This long-forgotten tale of the shipwreck off the coast of Africa of a Siamese embassy to Lisbon in 1686 lay buried in the text of a French book printed 300 years ago. The author of the text was the intrepid and intriguing Jesuit Tachard, who published accounts of his first two journeys to Siam. In his second book, written when he was King Narai’s personal envoy to Louis XIV and Pope Innocent XI, Tachard relates the account of the shipwreck as told by one of its survivors, Ok-khun Chamnan Chaicong, who was accompanying Tachard on his return to France. Ok-khun Chamnan, during his odyssey as part of the aborted embassy to Portugal, spent nearly a year in Goa, where he learned Portuguese; a month traveling overland from Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa, to the Cape of Good Hope; four months at the Dutch settlement at the Cape; six months in Batavia; and several months at sea. On his return to Siam in 1687 he was ordered to greet the French envoys La Loubre and Szberet soon after their arrival. The adventures of this Siamese khunnang did not end with his unsuccessful journey to Lisbon. He went on to Europe in 1688, visited the Riviera and Rome in winter, met the pope, and then in 1689 had an audience with Louis XIV. He converted to Catholicism and returned from Europe in 1690, disembarking at Balassor in Bengal before returning to Ayutthaya overland from Mergui. This extraordinary account has been translated into English for the first time, and is accompanied by three contemporary texts by Choisy, Tachard, and La Loubre describing the Dutch settlement at the Cape.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Stefan Eklof
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2006

Southeast Asia contains some of the world’s busiest shipping waters, particularly the Indonesian archipelago, the Straits of Malacca and South China Sea. The natural geography and human ecology of maritime Southeast Asia makes the area particularly apt for piracy. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that these waters are also the world’s most pirate-infested, accounting for over a third of the total number of pirate attacks world-wide. The figures have increased in recent years, as transnationally organized crime syndicates have extended their activities in the area. Meanwhile, the capacity of the state authorities in the region to suppress piracy appears to have declined, fuelling suspicions that sections of the maritime authorities are colluding with some of the organized pirate gangs that they are supposed to be combating. Not surprisingly, piracy has a long history in the region, and in several instances during the last 250 years, pirates have disrupted peaceful trade and communications. This text traces the shifting character and development of Southeast Asian piracy from the 18th century to the present day, demonstrating how political, economic, social and technological factors have contributed to change – but have by no means exterminated – the phenomenon.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Kenneth R. Hall
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011

This comprehensive history provides a fresh interpretation of Southeast Asia from 100 to 1500, when major social and economic developments foundational to modern societies took place on the mainland (Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) and the island world (Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines). Kenneth Hall explores this dynamic era in detail, which was notable for growing external contacts, internal adaptations of nearby cultures, and progressions from hunter-gatherer and agricultural communities to inclusive hierarchical states. In the process, formerly local civilizations became major participants in period’s international trade networks.

Incorporating the latest archeological evidence and international scholarship, Kenneth Hall enlarges upon prior histories of early Southeast Asia that did not venture beyond 1400, extending the study of the region to the Portuguese seizure of Melaka in 1511. Written for a wide audience of non-specialists, the book will be essential reading for all those interested in Asian and world history.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Shirley Fish
AuthorHouseUK, 2011

During the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the transpacific treasure galleons sailed annually from Manila to Acapulco. In Manila, the vessel was loaded with the scented spices of the East, luxurious silks from China, exquisite hand crafted lacquerware from Japan and a multitude of Oriental goods that the Spaniards of New Spain longed to own. The returning galleon from Acapulco to Manila, carried as much as 2.5 million silver pesos in payment of the goods sent to the New Spain in the previous year, as well as a yearly silver subsidy of 250,000 reales for the maintenance of the colonial government in the Philippines. But while the galleons mainly sailed alone and unaccompanied from Manila to Acapulco and vice versa, they were vulnerable to a host of calamities and misfortunes. A fire on board the vessel or a terrifying storm could end the voyage and the lives of every one on the ship even before the galleon was able to reach land. Additionally, the commanders of the galleons were always threatened by lurking pirates and privateers who preyed on the vessels and coveted the treasures they carried. The book describes in detail how the galleons were attacked at sea and how they fought against enemy vessels, as well as how many of the ships sank or were shipwrecked over the years. It also covers their management, construction, manning, weaponry, navigation, daily life on the ship, provisions, cargoes and voyages. The book contains an annotated list of the galleons sailing between the Philippines and Mexico from 1565 to 1815. This informative book is the first of its kind to cover such an expansive history of the Pacific galleons which up to this point had remained largely untold.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

by Lee Jones
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Drawing on the fields of political economy and historical sociology, Lee dispels the overwhelming consensus among scholars that members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) never interfere in the internal affairs of other states, and pioneers a new approach to the understanding of regional politics in Southeast Asia.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Lee Yoong Yoong
World Scientific Publishing Company, 2011

The initiative to establish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Community was adopted by the ten leaders at the 2003 Bali Summit in Indonesia. Since then, the concept of a community-building process in ASEAN has become an issue that attracts a great deal of attention from scholars and experts around the world.

ASEAN Matters! Reflecting on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations carries essays with different perspectives on critical issues relating to the three pillars in building the ASEAN Community, namely the ASEAN Political and Security Community; the ASEAN Economic Community; and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. In a nutshell, this book provides broad and invaluable insights into the role ASEAN plays in enhancing peace, prosperity, and stability in the Southeast Asian region.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Edited by Michael G. Plummer and Chia Siow Yue
Insitute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009

The ASEAN Economic Community constitutes the most ambitious programme of economic cooperation in the developing world. Its goal is to create no less than a free flow of goods, services, foreign direct investment, and skilled labour, as well as a freer flow of capital, throughout the region. Implementing this agenda will be technically and politically difficult. Hence, understanding the potential economic “payoff” is of the essence. The goal of this book is to assess empirically the likely economic effects of the AEC on the ASEAN Member States and associated stakeholders. It mobilizes a number of techniques to do so, and finds that the likely effects will be large, even greater than the anticipated effects of the Single Market Program in Europe, for example. The AEC will help the region improve competitiveness, facilitate the creation of production networks, foster the diffusion of “best practices,” and help ASEAN project its interests more effectively in an increasingly integrated, global economy.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Jurgen Haacke
Routledge, 2005

Examines the origins of ASEAN’s diplomatic and security culture and goes on to assess whether it is likely to remain salient as the political, economic and security context in which regional leaderships operate is undergoing further change.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Amitav Acharya
Routledge, 2009 (2nd edition)

This second edition of Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia takes the excellent framework from Acharya’s first edition and brings it up-to-date, looking at ASEAN’s comprehensive and critical account of the evolution of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) norms and the viability of the ASEAN way of conflict management.

Key issues in determining the future stability of the Southeast Asian and Asia Pacific region are covered, including:

• intra-regional relations and the effect of membership expansion
• the ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asian regionalism
• ASEAN’s response to terrorism and other transnational challenges
• debates over ASEAN’s non-interference doctrine
• the ‘ASEAN Security Community’ and the ASEAN Charter
• the impact of the rise of China and India and ASEAN’s relations with the US and Japan.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

Return to Top

Edited by Nicholas Tarling
NUS Press, 2013

C.M. (Mary) Turnbull’s contributions to historical writing on Singapore extended from her 1962 thesis, published in 1972 as The Straits Settlements, 1826-67: Indian presidency to crown colony, to her magisterial history of Singapore, first published in 1977 and re-issued in 2009 in an updated edition as A History of Modern Singapore, 1816-2006. Her approach to history involved detailed work with documents and published materials, with a particular focus on political and economic history. One contributor to the present volume described the book as an “exercise in endowing a modern ‘nation-state’ with a coherent past that should explain the present.”

As styles in history evolved, younger scholars including some of her former students and colleagues began exploring new approaches to historical research that drew on non-English-language source material and asked fresh questions of the sources. Mary enjoyed controversy and expected debate, and had a deep interest in these accounts, which were in many ways a natural progression from her own publications even when they raised questions about her interpretations and conclusions.

Studying Singapore’s Past had its origins in a conference organized to discuss her work. The volume includes ten contributions, some from long-established scholars of Singapore’s history, others from a new generation of researchers. Their work offers an evaluation of established understandings of Singapore’s history, and gives an indication of new directions that researchers are exploring. In publishing the book, the editor not only pays tribute to a distinguished historian but also makes a contribution to the historiography of Singapore and to ongoing debates about Singapore’s past.

Goodreads | Amazon

by James Leasor
James Leasor Limited, 2011

When Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, it was a devastating blow to the Allies, the British Empire and signalled a significant turning point in history. James Leasor’s story begins as far back as the early nineteenth century, with imperialism and the settlement founded by Sir Stamford Raffles. He charts the years leading up to Singapore’s defeat and the realisation that the West was not invincible. It includes direct, personal input from some of the main players involved including that of Lt-Gen Percival, the British commander who signed the surrender document, shortly before he died.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Mark Ravinder Frost, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
Editions Didier Millet, 2011

Singapore: A Biography takes you there — to those critical moments in the island’s past, as captured through the personal accounts of people who actually lived through them. Encounter violent unrest on the city’s streets, the jostling down its corridors of power, the high life of its up-and-coming elites, and the daily struggles of existence that lay beyond its five-foot ways, in an epic drama that stretches back over seven centuries. Grounded in scholarship yet fired by the imagination, this book tells a new Singapore story — one more dramatic, complex and engrossing than you might expect. Singapore was not always the orderly and successful city-state that it appears to be now. Over the last seven centuries, the island has undergone several changes of identity. In this entertaining and wide-ranging account, drawn from research undertaken in collaboration with the National Museum of Singapore, Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow present Singapore’s mercurial life-story as experienced by the people who participated in it.

Goodreads | Amazon

by Lee Kuan Yew
Harper; First Edition, 2000

Few gave tiny Singapore much chance of survival when it was granted independence in 1965. How is it, then, that today the former British colonial trading post is a thriving Asian metropolis with not only the world’s number one airline, best airport, and busiest port of trade, but also the world’s fourth–highest per capita real income?

The story of that transformation is told here by Singapore’s charismatic, controversial founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. Rising from a legacy of divisive colonialism, the devastation of the Second World War, and general poverty and disorder following the withdrawal of foreign forces, Singapore now is hailed as a city of the future. This miraculous history is dramatically recounted by the man who not only lived through it all but who fearlessly forged ahead and brought about most of these changes.

Delving deep into his own meticulous notes, as well as previously unpublished government papers and official records, Lee details the extraordinary efforts it took for an island city–state in Southeast Asia to survive at that time.

Goodreads | Amazon | Google Books

by Edmund M. Schirmer
Marshall Cavendish Trade, 2012

Japan invades and captures the British colony of Singapore in 1942. All Europeans on the island are being interned. Edward Schirmer, the author’s grandfather, faces a dilemma–he is German but born as a British subject. In a strange stroke of fortune, he finds himself friends with General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the famed “Tiger of Malaya.” Seeing the fate of the other Europeans, Edward reluctantlylets the Japanese assume he is a friendly German national. But when politics removes the protective Yamashita from the picture, betrayal ensues and Edward finds himself in prison, his family scattered.

This true-life account then moves on through the eyes of Edward’s son, Hans Schirmer–a six-year-old boy’s hellish quest for survival, alone on the streets of a war-torn vanquished nation. Where everyone is hungry and racial tension is rife. Where martial law allows the occupiers to summarily execute at will. Amid these horrors, this young boy learns to live, while witnessing an epic moment in history.

Goodreads | Amazon

Return to Top