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LEE KUAN YEW: The Beliefs Behind the Man. By Michael D. Barr. Richmond (U.K.): Curzon Press. 2000. xiv, 273 pp. L40.00, cloth. ISBN 07007-1325-5.
This study by Michael Barr on Singapore's strongman Lee Kuan Yew is by far the best available political biography of Lee. Most biographies of Lee are either hagiographies or highly speculative considerations of his character and politics. There are some exceptions:James Minchin's No Man is an Island: A Study of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew (St. Leonards, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1986), provided useful psychological insights into Lee's character. Barr broadly eschews psychology and concentrates on Lee's political ideas. And in this he succeeds admirably.
The book begins with a short biographical sketch of Lee and proceeds to examine what he calls his "progressivism." That is, his belief that the future of civilization depended on continued progress, and that to maintain this progress was a difficult and ongoing challenge. There were constant temptations and threats to derail the march of social and material progress. Barr's central claim is that it is...