Useful reading for those with an informed interest in geopolitics, or for anyone seeking to do business in Singapore.
A political memoir—and a playbook for how to start an improbably successful, postage-stamp nation.
In 1965, the island of Singapore, a strategically important British naval base with few resources of its own, gained unexpected independence when its Malay neighbors rejected union with Singapore’s predominantly Chinese population (evidently expecting that it would become a client state of Malaysia or Indonesia). Enter Lee Kuan Yew, a British-trained attorney and politician who made Singapore into a powerful city-state whose every detail (from family planning to education to traffic flow) he micromanaged. Lee’s authoritarian manner won him both admirers and detractors, as he himself relates in this memoir (which is organized not chronologically but thematically, with sections devoted, for instance, to “getting the basics right,” dealing with China, and forging alliances with the West), but it appears to have had the desired results, inasmuch as the people of Singapore remain independent, comparatively prosperous, and untroubled by the strife that now troubles the region. (They are, however, evidently not well enough behaved for Lee, who writes that “it will take another generation before standards of civic behavior of our people will match the First World infrastructure they now take for granted.”) Lee’s narrative is refreshingly free of the self-congratulatory tone of so many political memoirs; instead, he focuses dispassionately on the hard facts of building a trade economy, fending off the unwanted attentions of rival superpowers, and keeping an eye on the bottom line. His language is unadulterated realpolitik (not for nothing does Henry Kissinger contribute a foreword), and his view of such acts as China’s suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 is relentlessly practical. “But for [Deng Xiaoping],” he claims, “China would have collapsed as the Soviet Union did”—which might have robbed Singapore of a lucrative market, of course, and thus been catastrophic.
Useful reading for those with an informed interest in geopolitics, or for anyone seeking to do business in Singapore.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019776-5
Page Count: 736
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
The workplace (primarily the office) is the setting for this third volume of Tannen's Linguistics Lite trilogy. Tannen (Sociolinguistics/Georgetown) sticks close to the main idea she popularized almost a decade ago in That's Not What I Meant (1985): Men and women have different conversational styles that are equally valid (though unequally valued). Here, she describes women's disadvantages in the workplace: They are paid less than men for the same work and face ``sexism'' (a term Tannen keeps dubiously between quotation marks), a glass ceiling, and sexual harassment. Why do such problems persist? Tannen considers the difference in male and female conversational style as a primary cause. Women are likely to have an indirect manner, to apologize more, and to offer softer criticism; they're problem preventers instead of heroic crisis solvers; they generally strive for the appearance of equality with, not superiority to, their co-workers. Many (male) bosses overlook the value of this style. Tannen concludes that women should go with their own approach, but they should also try to be assertive and worry less about being liked than about being competent. Yet in the next breath, she acknowledges that women who act assertive may bring unpleasant consequences on themselves. In the end, she reaches for platitudes, blithely recommending that workers adopt a mix of styles and that managers learn to recognize and appreciate quality in diverse forms. She says ``on that happy day, the glass ceiling will become a looking glass through which a fair percentage of Alices will be able to step.'' Readers of her earlier books will find much that is familiar, from the research to the conclusions. Women facing a hostile work environment and seeking substantive improvements in their situation are likely to find that Tannen's recourse to ``stylistic differences'' ultimately offers little help. (First printing of 200,000; first serial to New York Times Magazine and Redbook; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection; Quality Paperback Book Club main selection; Fortune Book Club main selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11243-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
A savvy journalist's timely take on the evanescence of Japan's economic invincibility. Fresh from a stint as Tokyo bureau chief for The Economist, Wood (Boom and Bust, 1989) argues convincingly that the island nation poses a fading threat to Asian as well as Western rivals. Among other woes, he asserts, Dai Nihon's industrial base is burdened by overcapacity and swollen payrolls. The kind of mass dismissals that have kept America's labor costs at acceptable levels, the author observes, are inevitable if Japan is to remain competitive in world markets. By his tellingly detailed account, moreover, the country's financial institutions are not only primitive by Western standards but also vulnerable to future shocks created by the deflation of overvalued assets (in particular, urban property) and a rigged securities market that is not geared to provide corporations with either venture or expansion capital. Nor is Japan abreast, let alone ahead, of the pack in advanced technologies like computer software and wireless communications, which could offset declining demand for entertainment goods (TVs, VCRs, et al.). Wood points out as well that scandals have fractured the so-called iron triangle (business, the once-vaunted bureaucracy, professional politicians), effectively ending the Liberal Democratic Party's dominion and making Japan's governance more Italianate than Asian. He goes on to predict that civil disorders are likely once private enterprise starts downsizing and bargain-minded consumers systematically seek better deals in the nation's protected retail marketplace. In the meantime, the US is no longer willing to overlook the sharp practices of an ally no longer needed as a Pacific Basin buffer against the erstwhile Soviet Union. The subtitle notwithstanding, the text offers precious few perspectives on how Japan might emerge from its possibly convulsive renewal and restructuring. A worst-case audit that, if longer on reportage than analysis, provides ample evidence that Japan's challenge to the Global Village's economy has been put on hold by a host of home-front problems.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-50145-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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