Tag Archives: History

In My Hands Today…

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Seven Hundred Years: A History of Singapore – Kwa Chong Guan, Derek Heng, Peter Borschberg and Tan Tai Yong

Assessments of Singapore’s history invariably revolve around Sir Stamford Raffles’ arrival in 1819. Before this date – we’ve been told – “nothing very much appears to have happened in Singapore”. Pre-1819 Singapore was a sleepy, historically insignificant fishing village, little more than the “occasional resort of pirates”.

This ambitious book, co-written by four of Singapore’s foremost historians, offers an assertive re-evaluation of that view. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary range of archival, textual and cartographical records, as well as the latest archaeological discoveries, the authors cast a singular historical trajectory for Singapore over the past seven centuries, animating its history like never before.

Written in a compelling and accessible manner, and richly illustrated with more than 200 artefacts, photographs, maps, artworks and ephemera, this volume builds upon the foundations of an earlier book, Singapore: A 700-Year History. Extensively rewritten to incorporate ground-breaking research findings, Seven Hundred Years: A History of Singapore widens the historical lens and offers a vital new perspective on the story of Singapore.

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Tesla: Inventor of the Modern – Richard Munson

Nikola Tesla invented radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories.

In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons, and interstellar communication. His ideas have lived on to shape the modern economy, yet he has been largely overlooked by history.

In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind. Drawing on letters, technological notebooks, and other primary sources, Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of the enigmatic inventor whose most famous inventions were the product of a mind fueled by both the humanities and sciences — Tesla conceived the induction motor while walking through a park and reciting Goethe’s Faust. Clear, authoritative, and highly readable, Tesla takes into account all the phases of Tesla’s remarkable life and career.

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Assassination Vacation – Sarah Vowell

With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other—a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.

From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue—it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and—the author’s favorite— historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult.

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Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond – William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

On 29 March 1849, the ten-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the centre of the great Fort in Lahore. There, in a public ceremony, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company in a formal Act of Submission to Queen Victoria not only swathes of the richest land in India, but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i Noor diamond. The Mountain of Light.

The history of the Koh-i-Noor that was then commissioned by the British may have been one woven together from gossip of Delhi Bazaars, but it was to be become the accepted version. Only now is it finally challenged, freeing the diamond from the fog of mythology which has clung to it for so long. The resulting history is one of greed, murder, torture, colonialism and appropriation through an impressive slice of south and central Asian history. It ends with the jewel in its current controversial setting: in the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

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My Homage to All – Kanan Devi, translated by Indranee Ghosh

One of the most powerful women in the movies was thousands of miles from Hollywood.

Kanan Devi, one of the early singing stars, came into the film world in the silent era and, unlike many others, survived the transition to talkies. The product of a troubled childhood, her life took a dramatic turn when she was offered a film role and, encouraged by her uncle, took it.

In this lively and candid account of her experiences, originally published in 1973, Kanan Devi recalls the early days of cinema in Bengal, comparing conditions of film acting in the early 1930s with what she experienced two or three decades later when she herself was a producer and director, with her own film company, Shrimati Pictures.

Her fascinating and unusual story offers not only a different perspective on the growth of the film industry in Bengal but also a first-hand account of the position of women in the early decades of the last century.