Harry Builds a Nation is the third book in the picture book series about Singapore’s remarkable leader, Lee Kuan Yew. Where A Boy Named Harry showed his determination and Harry Grows Up his courage, this book features Harry’s vision. Working with a strong team who shared his can-do spirit, Harry brought Singapore out of colonial rule and turned his beloved country into an independent, successful and much-admired nation.

<2nd Prize Winner of Popular Readers' Choice Awards 2015, English (Children) Category> Harry Grows Up is the second book in the series of picture books about the life of Singapore’s remarkable leader, Lee Kuan Yew. In the first book, A Boy Named Harry, young readers learn what it was like for him to grow up in British-ruled Singapore. In this book, Harry is now a teenager, eager to start college. But his world is suddenly turned upside down when the Japanese capture Singapore. This engaging story tells about Harry’s courage, from the years of the Japanese Occupation to the founding of the People’s Action Party.

The future leader of Singapore spent his growing up years doing what other children did in the 1920s. Harry liked to play with spinning tops, marbles, kites—and even fighting fish! While he was a little mischievous as a child, Harry worked hard in school to achieve academic success, eventually winning scholarships to attend the prestigious Raffles College. Especially for younger readers, this inspiring picture book about the childhood of Harry Lee Kuan Yew is one that parents, caregivers and teachers can share with children, providing the perfect opportunity for grown-ups to tell share with them his contributions to the country.

The authors compare the "public spirited work [that] enabled diverse peoples to forge connection, gain a stake in the nation, and find intellectual challenges [to] a time when people are predominately consumers instead of producers." They offer many current examples which demonstrate encouraging changes.

Includes maps of the U.S. Congressional districts.

Why not take seriously the claim that Harry Potter's world intertwines with our own? In this timely yet otherworldly volume, more than a dozen scholars of international relations join hands to demonstrate how this well-loved artifact of popular culture reflects and shapes our own lifeworld. A wide range of historical and sociological sources shows how Harry's world contains aspects of our own. Practices such as quidditch dovetail quite clearly with 'muggle' sports, and the very British-ness of the books has, in translation into languages such as Turkish and Arabic, been transformed to reflect these unique cultures. Chapters on the political economy of the franchise as well as the scholarly problems of studying popular culture frame what is essentially a highly info-taining read.

The book addresses questions such as: how should historians treat the earlier pasts of each country and the nationalism that guided the nation-building tasks? Where did political culture come in, especially when dealing with modern challenges of class, secularism and ethnicity? What part do external or regional pressures play when the nations are still being built? The authors have thought deeply about the issues of writing nation-building histories and have tried to put them not only in the perspective of Southeast Asian developments of the past five decades, but also the larger areas of historiography today.