Books like The Singapore story by Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore, shares fifty years of diplomatic wisdom and insights on East–West geopolitics in a question‑and‑answer format gathered from speeches, interviews, and his writings.

A comprehensive collection of Lee Kuan Yew’s speeches, interviews and press‑conference dialogues from 1990 to 2011, documenting his role as senior minister and mentor through major events such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis, SARS and the fight against terrorism.

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.

"This volume studies the origins and development of Lee Kuan Yew's political thought from his childhood and schooldays onwards. Augmenting a wealth of established primary sources with his own interviews and correspondence with Lee's old associates in school, university and government, Michael Barr presents a critical examination of Lee's life, his career and his ideas. In so doing, he seeks to unravel many of the apparent contradictions and enigmas that bedevil Lee's career, and examines how Lee has been influenced by British and Chinese racism, Western progressivism, English and Chinese elitism, and even the cultural evolutionism of Arnold Toynbee."--BOOK JACKET.