Miss Seetoh in the World
Catherine Lim
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2011
ISBN: 9789814328364

Miss Maria Seetoh, a teacher of English and Literature in St Peter's Secondary School in Singapore, sees herself as a 'simple soul who only wants to be a good and happy person', and has a dream to write stories about 'simple, ordinary people going about their daily lives'. However, God/Providence/Fate/Chance, etc. decrees otherwise. She is thrown into the tumult of a disastrous marriage that begins as strangely as it ends, a teaching career that ends with her abrupt resignation. Most of all, she is caught in a political event as shocking in its causes as in its consequences.

Set against the backdrop of modern-day Singapore, a hugely successful city-state grappling with changes and challenges that could corrode the very soul, the novel ultimately examines, with wit, wry irony and warm understanding, the unchanging quandaries of the human condition, when love and sex, religion and politics, tradition and modernity, can all come together in an unruly mix, to show human nature at its most depressing and its most inspiring.

English in Singapore: Modernity and Management
Lisa Lim, Anne Pakir, and Lionel Wee (eds.)
Singapore: NUS Press, 2010
ISBN: 9789971695361

English in Singapore provides an up-to-date, detailed and comprehensive investigation into the various issues surrounding the sociolinguistics of English in Singapore. Rather than attempting to cover the usual topics in an overview of a variety of English in a particular country, the essays in this volume are important for identifying some of the most significant issues pertaining to the state and status of English in Singapore in modern times, and for doing so in a treatment that involves a critical evaluation of work in the field and new and thought-provoking angles for reviewing such issues in the context of Singapore in the twenty-first century. The contributions address the historical trajectory of English (past, present and possible future), its position in relation to language policy and multiculturalism, the relationship between the standard and colloquial varieties, and how English can and should be taught. This book is thus essential reading for scholars and students concerned with how the dynamics of the English language are played out and managed in a modern society such as Singapore. It will also interest readers who have a more general interest in Asian studies, the sociology of language, and World Englishes.

Singapore Family Favourites: A Selection of Delicious Home Grown Recipes From Singaporean Families
Newport, NSW: Big Sky Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 9780980814033

Great food is at the heart of the Singaporean lifestyle. It's the bond that brings friends and families together. Everyday around Singapore, people from diverse backgrounds and cultural origins get together to cook their families' favourite recipes and experience the pleasure and enjoyment cooking brings.

The Family Favourites cookbook brings to you a collection of delicious, simple to prepare recipes from the many talented families who entered the 2010 FairPrice Family Cook Off competition and TV series and the recipes created on the show.

While essentially a simple, everyday cookbook, Family Favourites brings great recipes to life with a rice family tradition. Accompanying each recipe are family photographs, entertaining and inspiring family stories and the dishes that each of the families passionately create.

Deadly Secrets: The Singapore Raids, 1942-45
Lynette Ramsay Silver
Binda, NSW: Sally Milner Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 9781863514101

In February 1942, when Australian Bill Reynolds escaped from beleaguered Singapore in a battered Japanese fishing boat, he had no idea that his nondescript vessel would be the catalyst for Operation Jaywick, one of the most daring missions undertaken behind enemy lines in World War II. Using Reynolds' boat, now renamed Krait, a small band of intrepid men attacked enemy shipping in Singapore Harbour - an action that would have far reaching and tragic repercussions on the people of Singapore. The following year, members of the same team embarked upon a second and far more ambitious raid, Operation Rimau. Although this mission was partially successful, every member of the party was killed.

In telling the story of both these raids, author Lynette Silver reveals a number of deadly secrets, and gives an insight into the world of covert operations, partly through the eyes of Denis Emerson-Elliott, a British secret service agent closely associated with both missions. She also lays to rest a number of myths which have arisen in the sicty-five years since the Singapore raids took place. A sobering aspect of many of the special operations carried out by Australian forces during World War II is that many fine men who volunteered for hazardous service died while carrying out missions that were politically, rather than militarily, motivated. Even more sobering is the fact that on the Australian army's post-war assessment, many of these operations, including Jaywick and Rimau, achieved nothing but death, misery and suffering.

The Passionate Islanders: A Factual Story, Singapore at War 1941-42
Ralph Modder
Singapore: Horizon Books, 2010
ISBN: 9789810870379

The Passionate Islanders is based on factual events and situations about the light and darker sides of life in Singapore during British colonial rule as well as before and during the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December 1941 and Singapore in February 1942.

Singapore was the prime target for Japanese bombers, causing heavy casualties among the civilian population. Hotels and schools became casualty stations while private vehicles substituted for ambulances.

In a spirited effort to relieve the grave crisis, civilians of various races bravely helped in rescues and fire-fighting with make-shift equipment, also providing first-aid, food and temporary shelter for the hundreds of homeless.

This indomitable Singapore Spirit was seen after the Japanese invasion on 8 February 1942, when poorly-armed and hastily-trained Chinese volunteers of Dalforce fought fierce hand-to-hand battles in the north, west and northwest. In the southwest, units of the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Malay Regiment heroically held up the advance of the Japanese 18th Division in the battle of Opium Hill on 13-14 February. Singapore surrendered on 15 February.

Wang Gungwu: Junzi, Scholar-Gentleman: In Conversation with Asad-Ul Iqbal Latif
Wang Gungwu, Asad-Ul Iqbal Latif (interviewer)
Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 9789814311526

This book of interviews with Professor Wang Gungwu, published to felicitate him on his 80th birthday in 2010, seeks to convey to a general audience something of the life, times and thoughts of a leading historian, Southeast Asianist, Sinologist and public intellectual. The interviews flesh out Professor Wang's views on being Chinese in Malaya; his experience of living and working in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia; the Vietnam War; Hong Kong and its return to China; the rise of China; Taiwan's, Japan's and India's place in the emerging scheme of things; and the United States in an age of terrorism and war. The book includes an interview with his wife, Mrs Margaret Wang, on their life together for half a century. Two interviews by scholars on Professor Wang's work are also included, as are his curriculum vitae and a select bibliography of his works.

What comes across in this book is how Professor Wang was buffeted by feral times and hostile worlds but responded to them as a left-liberal humanist who refused to cut ideological corners. this book records his response to tumultuous times on hindsight, but with a keen sense of having lived through the times of which he speaks.

Socially Responsible & Sustainable: Company Perspectives and Experiences
Evelyn S. Wong (ed.)
Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2011
ISBN: 9789814266734

The debate for or against corporate social responsibility (CSR) is over. Global trends show that the move to embed CSR within the organisation's core values, policies and practices are gaining acceptance and momentum.

This book looks at the CSR practices of 10 enterprises that have helped to distinguish themselves in the market for consumers, employees, investors, and in the community as socially responsible corporate citizens. They are local and foreign companies in Singapore, including publicly-listed companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with business in the following industries: manufacturing, hospitality, public transportation, energy, property development and management, and agri-business.

This book also tracks the continuing journey of the 10 enterprises featured in a 2009 Singapore Compact publication, CSR for Sustainability and Success.

These company experiences show that, although their priorities and strategies may be different, they all leverage on their business strengths to achieve the same goal - to contribute to sustainable development and the well-being of their stakeholders and society as a shared responsibility.

Dynamics of the Singapore Success Story: Insights by Ngiam Tong Dow

Ngiam Tong Dow

Singapore: Cengage Learning Asia, 2011

ISBN: 9789814336079

Singapore's success story has been widely read. How and why this transformation came about, however, has seldom been publicly analyzed and articulated. Very few insiders with firsthand experience have chosen to illuminate the fundamental public policies guiding Singapore's social and economic growth. Yet it is this aspect of the Singapore story that most intrigues outside observers.

Based on his rich, firty-year experience as a senior Singapore civil servant, Ngiam Tong Dow manages to present a clear picture in this book of Singapore's  path toward success. It is a collection of his speeches, interviews, and articles delivered and written between 2004 and 2010. According to Ngiam, what lies behind Singapore's spectacular achievements from 1959 onward is the island nation's relentless pursuit of knowledge as the critical lever for development. Singapore is the forerunner of knowledge-based economies emerging in this new millennium.

Collected Plays Two: The Asian Boys Trilogy: Dreamplay / Landmarks / Happy Endings
Alfian Sa'at
Singapore: Ethos Books & W!LD RICE Ltd, 2010
ISBN: 9789810870416

Alfian Sa'at's The Asian Boys Trilogy is a fascinating, insightful tour through the lives and loves of the gay community in Singapore. In the campy and carnivalesque Dreamplay, history is turned upside-down as a goddess travels through time to 'save gay men from themselves'. In Landmarks, geography takes centrestage, as eight short plays explore the spaces that have been claimed, colonised, and trespassed by those at the margins of the mainstream. In Happy Endings, the playwright's adaptation of the novel Peculiar Chris evolves into a meditation on the relationship between life and literature. With clear-eyed compassion and eloquent outrage, this collection of plays charts the coming-of-age of a community finding its voice.

GASPP: A Gay Anthology of Singapore Poetry and Prose
Ng Yi-Sheng, Dominic Chua, Irene Oh, & Jasmine Seah (eds.)
Singapore: The Literary Centre, 2010
ISBN: 9789810868086

GASPP is Singapore's first anthology of writers who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and otherwise queer. It's the combined work of 35 authors, translators and editors, who've contributed poetry, short fiction, memoirs, essays and experimental writing in English, Mandarin and Malay.

Between these covers, you'll meet a loving couple struck by HIV, a lesbian lawyer confronted by her past, a voyeur in a New York library, an alarmed government censor, and a bomoh with a magic formula that keeps gay men faithful.

Romantic, sensual, funny and bizarre, these works are a testament to the range of voices that constitute queer literature in Singapore today. Featured writers include Johann S. Lee, Ovidia Yu, Alfian Sa'at, Ng Yi-Sheng and Adrianna Tan.

I Married a Barbarian: The Heart-Warming, True Story of a British Lad and a Chinese Lass
Dennis Bloodworth and Liang Ching Ping
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010
ISBN: 9789814302869

What happens when a proud Chinese woman meets a Western foreign correspondent? In their individual styles, Dennis and Ping tell a gripping tale in two voices of how love transcends geography, culture and daily tribulations. Out of 42 years of marriage and against their domestic war of civilisations comes this heartwarming story of growing affection, insights and understanding.

The Sacrifice of Singapore: Churchill's Biggest Blunder
Michael Arnold
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2010
ISBN: 9789814302944

The fate of Singapore was sealed long before the Japanese attack in December 1941. The blame lay with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who refused to listen to warnings from military advisors to reinforce defences in Singapore/Malaya, convinced the Japanese would never dare to attack a 'white power'. Obsessed with beating German General Erwin Rommel, he poured into the Middle East massive resources that should have gone to the Far East. However, when inevitably Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942, Churchill attempted to deflect criticism by accusing the defenders there of spineless capitulation.

Recently released information from the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington reveals that United States President Franklin Roosevelt not only knew of the impending attack on Pearl Harbour but actually instigated it. Although Roosevelt promised a shield of B-17 aircraft for Singapore from Manila, General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines had been told to do nothing until after the Japanese attacks there and at Pearl Harbour so that the United States could claim an unprovoked assault that would allow them to declare war on Japan.

This book provides an account of events during World War II as they unfolded in Malaya, Singapore and elsewhere in the world prior to the Japanese attack, as well as a detailed study of the troops on the ground attacking and defending Singapore.

Our Homes: 50 Years of Housing a Nation
Warren Fernandez
Singapore: Straits Times Press & Housing Development Board, 2010
ISBN: 9789814266741

From a distance, the blocks of Housing Board flats that dot the island all round Singapore appear to have sprung up from the ground, a seemingly inevitable product of the city-state's rapid economic development over the past decades.

But the story of how these flats and new towns rose gradually over the past five decades is anything but straightforward.

Indeed, faced with a chronic housing shortage and burgeoning slums around the city, many harboured doubts that the new Housing and Development Board was up to the task of tackling the fledgeling state's problems when it was launched on 1 February 1960.

A massive fire soon afterwards in Bukit Ho Swee, which left scores homeless, added to HDB's challenge to build simple, affordable homes - and quickly.

Policies designed to help families pay for their flats and become home owners made all the difference, as did rules which ensured that the estates were ethnically and socially integrated. Right from the start, HDB strived to foster communities, conscious of the need to give the people homes, not just houses.

Our Homes: 50 Years of Housing a Nation traces this story. It is based on first-hand interviews with many of the key players over the years, from policy makers to political leaders, including new interviews with three past and present prime ministers of Singapore as well as HDB residents themselves. It highlights the unique aspects of HDB living, such as void decks, hawker centres, courtyards in the sky and bamboo-pole holders to hang out the washing to dry.

The book's conclusion also looks ahead to ponder the future of the HDB, posing the question: What next for public housing?

Both those who have lived in HDB estates, or marvelled from a distance at how these array of blocks came to be, will find this book a revealing account of just what it took for a young nation with a determined people to build a common home.

From Within the Marrow
Yong Shu Hoong
Singapore: firstfruits, 2010
ISBN: 9789810860332

Time, passing, can be nothing more than a single straight line, But Yong Shu Hoong's fourth collection of poems laces the notion of time elapsed and memories gained with nostalgia, humour and a renewed curiosity at things made strange by distance.

Secrets of the Little Red Cow: Insights to SME Branding & Growth
Luke Lim, A.S. Louken
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Business, 2010
ISBN: 9789814276115

With their vast experience working with Singapore SMEs - some of which have grown into award-winning and regional brands - A.S. Louken, a brand growth consultancy, delve into what brands should do to survive and thrive in today's fiercely competitive marketplace.

From the basic tenets of brand building to how brands should protect their assets, and the steps they should take to capture a slice of the international market, Secrets of the Little Red Cow will take readers through some of A.S. Louken's amazing journeys.

Written in a lively, succinct, easy-to-read style, and filled with interesting case studies, this book is a refreshing alternative with its strong focus on local rather than global brands. It gets right to the heart of key concerns and challenges of SME growth, the lessons and heartaches along the way, and the ultimate joy of success.

The Tiger and the Trojan Horse
Dennis Bloodworth
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2011
ISBN: 9789814328265

'Some mug had to do it,' said Lee Kuan yew, explaining what appeared to be an act of pure folly - the decision of a politically puny group of young nationalists to take on the powerful communist movement in a crucial struggle for Singapore.

In the first phase, the antagonists became partners, for while the nationalists were obliged to ride the communist tiger to gain the support of the masses, the outlawed communists saw their group as the Trojan Horse through which they could capture constitutional power in a key British colony. The ultimate aim of the ambitious 'moderates', led by Lee Kuan Yew, was to rid Singapore of both colonialists and communists, in that order. And they succeeded.

This is no academic study, and the often bizarre inside story of that duel between ill matched adversaries - the People's Action Party and the Communist United Front - is brought startlingly to life in an account full of irony and paradox, strange encounters, bloody riots, and brutal assassinations. Dennis Bloodworth takes us into the half-world of the communist underground, with its elaborate tradecraft and secret rendezvous in a vivid tale of ruthlessness matched against ruthlessness - seen from both sides and told with cool impartiality.

Secrets of the Battlebox
Romen Bose
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2011
ISBN: 9789814328548

The Battlebox, Britain's Command HQ in the Malayan Campaign during the Second World War, lies beneath Singapore's Fort Canning. After the war, it was sealed off and forgotten until the late 1990s.

Secrets of the Battlebox provides an understanding of the Battlebox: its history, uses and final role in the Malayan Campaign. It seeks to address the gap in knowledge in one of the most crucial aspects of the Second World War in Malaya and Singapore, i.e. the role of the command headquarters in the campaign.

Syonan: My Story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore
Mamoru Shinozaki
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2011
ISBN: 9789814328524

Syonan My Story is the biography of Mamoru Shinozaki. Born in Japan in February 1908, he became a journalist after graduating from Meiji University. He later joined the Japanese Foreign Ministry and was sent to Berlin as a press attaché in 1936. In October 1938, he was posted to Singapore. While in Singapore, the British convicted and jailed him as a Japanese spy. During the Japanese Occupation, he risked his life to save thousands of locals from being arrested and detained by the military police through his liberal issue of personal safety passes and the creation of safe havens. During the war crimes trial for the Sook Ching Massacre, he was a key witness for the prosecution. Mr Shinozaki passed away in the early 1990s.

The First Chief: Wee Chong Jin: A Judicial Portrait
John Koh
Singapore: Academy Publishing, 2010
ISBN: 9789810856304

"This book assesses Chong Jin's achievements in building up a highly respected judiciary amidst a tumultuous social and political environment that made it necessary for him to take a safe road that would preserve the Judiciary's independence in dispensing justice to all equally and impartially. As the author says, Chong Jin was a wise judge, and 'As the Chief Justice, he steered the Judiciary through the turbulence and his era laid the foundation for the rule of law of modern Singapore'.
...
This is a book which all members of the Bar, especially the present generation of lawyers, should read to get the flavour of the public persona of Chong Jin. He had sought, by example and precept, to uphold the dignity of his office, the integrity of the Judiciary in administering justice, and the rule of law throughout his long years of service as Chief Justice. Readers can judge for themselves whether he has succeeded and left a legacy worthy of remembrance by the Bench and the Bar."
- Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong