Singapore: A Biography

Brimming with verve and dramatic incident, Singapore: A Biography offers fresh insights into the lifestory of this island city-state through the personal experiences of the workers, adventurers, rulers and revolutionaries who have shaped its history over the last seven centuries. The authors, drawing on research undertaken in collaboration with the National Museum of Singapore, have woven together ancient chronicles, eyewitness accounts, oral histories and even modern radio and television broadcasts to create a vivid and compelling narrative that brings the past back to life. Grounded in scholarship yet fired by the imagination, this book reveals the Singapore story to have been as rich, diverse and multilayered as the city-state is prosperous, ordered and successful today.

Praise:

“Singapore's past comes to life in this thoroughly engaging book ... a pleasure to read from start to finish!”
--Lynn Pan, author of Sons of the Yellow Emperor

“… masterfully combines rich life stories, public history and cutting-edge historiography … greatly enjoyable.”
--Tim Harper, author of Forgotten Armies and Forgotten Wars and Senior Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge

“A very readable, well crafted work of popular history... should get wider attention well beyond our shores.”
--Wang Gungwu, University Professor, National University of Singapore and Emeritus Professor, Australian National University

Readership:
For the non-specialist with an interest in history, Southeast Asia and Singapore

About The Authors:
Mark Ravinder Frost studied history at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and has published articles on Asian history in journals such as Modern Asian Studies and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. Between 2005 to 2007, he worked as Content Director and Senior Scriptwriter for the National Museum of Singapore’s new Singapore History Gallery. Currently, he is Research Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow studied English and History at Northwestern University then worked as an English teacher at a local Singapore junior college and with the Ministry of Education, prior to writing full time. In 2006, she became a senior researcher and script editor for the Singapore History Gallery and Living Galleries of the National Museum of Singapore. Currently, she divides her time between writing about history, film and culture in Singapore, and travelling across Asia, researching and writing for publications such as Lonely Planet.