A brief, affectionate history of Singapore that provides a compelling but incomplete and surprisingly discursive portrait of...
The history of Singapore’s improbable path to becoming an economically powerful city-state.
Perry (Facing West: Americans and the Opening of the Pacific, 1995, etc.), a former professor of maritime history, offers an admiring portrait of Singapore, a tiny island nation that has overcome enormous obstacles in order to wield global influence from its perch on the commercially and strategically vital Melaka Straits. The author’s first item on the agenda is to debunk the myth of “mudflatism,” the idea that “Singapore was entirely a nineteenth-century creation rising from the marshes, virtually nothing.” Those who perpetuate that myth are “unmindful of a past reaching back seven hundred years in all.” Still, Perry acknowledges that Singapore’s founding by the legendary Thomas Stamford Raffles as a British port established the unique constraints that would shape the maritime city-state’s history. Because the island “could boast no resources not readily available elsewhere,” sea-borne trade became Singapore’s lifeline and raison d'être. “By the end of the nineteenth century,” writes the author, “maritime activities and networks defined Singapore’s economic, social, and cultural space.” Perry often takes an outside-in approach, focusing on the foreign powers that played such a dominant role in Singapore’s history. While he is undoubtedly correct that Singapore’s unique circumstances often left it “more acted upon than actor,” his big-picture approach sometimes neglects the lives and contributions of Singaporeans in favor of lengthy discussions on topics such as European rivalries, canal building, and developments in shipping technology. Post-independence, Perry’s narrative focuses more on Singaporean initiative, in particular on the technocratic brilliance of Lee Kuan Yew and his peers among Singapore’s ruling elite. However, the author’s praise for Singapore’s miraculous economic transformation is scarcely tempered by concern over human rights abuses, for example. In his enthusiasm for Singapore’s underdog successes, Perry comes uncomfortably close to triumphalism.
A brief, affectionate history of Singapore that provides a compelling but incomplete and surprisingly discursive portrait of the island nation.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-046950-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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