Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia

"In 1965, Singapore's GDP per capita was on a par with Jordan. Now it has outstripped Japan. After the Second World War and a sudden rupture with newly-founded Malaysia, Singapore found itself independent-and facing a crisis. It took the bloody-minded determination and vision of Lee Kuan Yew, its founding premier, to tak a small island of diverse ethnic groups with a fragile economy and hostile neighbors and meld it into Asia's first globalised city."--