Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History
Why did independent Singapore celebrate two hundred years of its founding as a British colony in 2019? What does Merdeka mean for Singaporeans? And what are the possibilities of doing decolonial history in Singapore? Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History presents essays by historians, literary scholars and artists which grapple with these questions. The volume also reproduces some of the source material used in the play Merdeka / 獨立 / சுதந்திரம் (Wild Rice, 2019). Taken together, the book shows how the contradictions of independent nationhood haunt Singaporeans' collective and personal stories about Merdeka. It points to the need for a Merdeka history: an open and fearless culture of historical reckoning that not only untangles us from colonial narratives, but proposes emancipatory possibilities.
Hard Choices
Singapore is changing. The consensus that the PAP government has constructed and maintained over five decades is fraying. The assumptions that underpin Singaporean exceptionalism are no longer accepted as easily and readily as before. Among these are the ideas that the country is uniquely vulnerable, that this vulnerability limits its policy and political options, that good governance demands a degree of political consensus that ordinary democratic arrangements cannot produce, and that the country's success requires a competitive meritocracy accompanied by relatively little income or wealth redistribution.But the policy and political conundrums that Singapore faces today are complex and defy easy answers. Confronted with a political landscape that is likely to become more contested, how should the government respond? What reforms should it pursue? This collection of essays suggests that a far-reaching and radical rethinking of the country's policies and institutions is necessary, even if it weakens the very consensus that enabled Singapore to succeed in its first fifty years.
Living in a Time of Deception
This is the historical memoir of Dr Poh Soo Kai, a man of medicine and a founder member of the People’s Action Party.
New Naratif
"Commissions across Southeast Asia" --cover.
The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore
Operation Coldstore remains the most contentious event in the history of postcolonial Singapore. Despite attempts by the state to silence ex-detainees, by warning that they would not be permitted to rewrite the state’s official version of history, the authors in this volume have done just that. They have placed on record their own perspective of events. The autobiographical element in the narratives brings to life what these individuals went through as left-wing political actors who responded to the call of anti colonialism and the challenge of shaping a new society. Their accounts of life in prison are a sober reminder of the deprivations and tortures inflicted to break their spirit. These stirring accounts are supplemented by academic contributions that provide contextual depth to the historical events and a critique of history writing in Singapore.
"Original Sin"?
“Revisionist” or “alternative” historians have increasingly questioned elements of the Singapore Story — the master narrative of the nation’s political and socioeconomic development since its founding by the British in 1819. Much criticism focuses especially on one defining episode of the Story: the internal security dragnet mounted on 2 February 1963 against Communist United Front elements on the island, known to posterity as Operation Coldstore. The revisionists claim that Coldstore was mounted for political rather than security reasons and actually destroyed a legitimate Progressive Left opposition — personalized by the charismatic figure of Lim Chin Siong — rather than a dangerous Communist network as the conventional wisdom holds. Relying on both declassified and some previously unseen classified sources, this book challenges revisionist claims, reiterating the historic importance of Coldstore in helping pave the way for Singapore’s remarkable journey from Third World status to First in a single generation.
Go Toxic Free
Taking you on an in-depth tour of your everyday household products, Anna Turns reveals the harmful chemicals that lurk inside your home, the damage they can cause and helpful swaps and tips to avoid them wherever you can.
The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew
The Singapore Story is the first volume of the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, the man who planted the island state of Singapore firmly on the map of the world. It was first published in 1999. In intimate detail, Lee recounts the battles against colonialists, communists and communalists that led to Singapore’s independence. With consummate political skill, he countered adversaries, sometimes enlisting their help, at others opposing them, in the single-minded pursuit of Singapore’s interests. We read how he led striking unionists against the colonial government, how over tea and golf he fostered ties with key players in Britain and Malaya, of secret midnight meetings in badly lit rooms, drinking...
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a bestselling graphic novelist comes “a hugely ambitious, stylistically acrobatic work” (The New York Times Book Review) that brings us on a uniquely moving, funny, and thought-provoking journey through the life of an artist and the history of a nation. Meet Charlie Chan Hock Chye. Now in his early 70s, Chan has been making comics in his native Singapore since 1954, when he was a boy of 16. As he looks back on his career over five decades, we see his stories unfold before us in a dazzling array of art styles and forms, their development mirroring the evolution in the political and social landscape of his homeland and of the comic book medium itself. With The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Sonny Liew has drawn together a myriad of genres to create a thoroughly ingenious and engaging work, where the line between truth and construct may sometimes be blurred, but where the story told is always enthralling.
