IN the sweep of southeast Asian history, there has never been as driven a builder as Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore is the house he built, cleaned up, modernized and renovated fastidiously, if not compassionately, over the past four decades. He is Singapore's creator and, judging by his active involvement in running the city state, its guardian. Prime minister for 30 years, he remains in the Cabinet, exercising barely diminished influence as senior minister. His regimen of frugality and iron discipline transformed Singapore from dependent colonial port into Southeast Asia's premier financial and technological center. Arguably the brightest light in the region's political firmament, he has had a profound impact beyond the Lion City. He was a thorn in Malaysia's side, the proponent of prudence in ASEAN and an unwavering defender of the model of development based on so-called Asian values.

So when such a towering figure has his memoirs published, it is a landmark event. Two years ago, the first volume of Lee's recollections, The Singapore Story, certainly grabbed headlines. His account of the events in the run-up to Singapore's Separation from Malaysia and independence in 1965 stirred up bad blood across the Causeway. The controversy centered on Lee's descriptions of revered Malaysian leaders, including founding father and prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, his successor Tun Abdul Razak, and Malay leader Syed Jaafar Albar. For one thing, Kuala Lumpur objected to suggestions that their beloved Tunku was a womanizer who indulged in such un-Islamic activities as gambling. Leading the chorus of critics: Razak and Syed Jaafar's sons, both Cabinet ministers, who issued angry rebuttals of Lee's comments about their fathers.

On September 16 - Lee's 77th birthday - the long-awaited second volume of his memoirs is to be launched. From Third World to First begins where he left off, charting Singapore's progress from 1965 to the present. Yet while the new book is similarly rich in detail and provides revealing insights into Lee's roles as nation-builder, international statesman and family man, it is likely to be far less contentious. Not least because relations between Malaysia and Singapore are on a better footing. Volume one went to press at a time when ties were already frosty over a range of issues. Among them: a longstanding dispute over railway property in Singapore, comments Lee made in an affidavit about crime in the Malaysian town of Johor Baru, and questions about the arrangements for supplying water to the Lion City. At the time, Singapore seemed awkwardly scornful of - and privately worried about - Kuala Lumpur's efforts to go head-to-head with the city state by investing in new infrastructure, including an international airport and a high-tech "corridor," and upgrading its national airline to compete against Singapore Airlines.

The cross-Causeway atmosphere, however, has turned for the better. Last month, Lee took his first official trip to the Malaysian capital in 10 years. While frank remarks he made about the case of jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim rankled with his hosts, the controversy was practically forgotten in days. And initial reactions in the Malaysian press to the second volume have accentuated the positive. Headlines have highlighted Lee's assertion that "despite my differences with him, I made more progress solving bilateral problems with Mahathir [Mohamad] in the nine years he was prime minister from 1981 to 1990, when I stepped down, than in the previous 12 years with Tun Razak and Hussein Onn as prime ministers."

Hussein, Malaysia's third premier, also receives a Lee bouquet. "I liked him," he writes. "His comments are not so harsh," says Hussein's son, Hishammuddin, 38, who is Malaysia's youth and sports minister. "The earlier [volume] had been very personal and he touched a raw nerve with the sons of those he wrote about." Hishammuddin seems happy to accord Lee the prerogative of an elder worthy of leeway. "There have been a lot of comments made by him regarding Separation and our leaders, most of whom are no longer around, but I respect him for being a very senior minister who is not really bound by the niceties of diplomacy that normally bind those now in position. He is freer to say what he wants." Meanwhile, Tan Siok Choo, daughter of former Malaysian finance minister Tan Siew Sin, says she is disappointed with some of Lee's references to her father. "My father's decision to end the common currency arrangement was not rooted in anti-Singapore feeling," she says. "It stemmed from a desire to remove a future source of conflict."

Some Singaporeans are bound to believe that Lee consciously took a kinder, gentler approach. After reading excerpts, including parts of the chapter on relations with Malaysia, Singapore lawyer and nominated MP Simon Tay pronounces the tone of the second volume markedly more "restrained" than the first. Says Tay: "They are the memoirs of an active politician, without the vitriol of somebody who has left the scene and is willing to say what he wants." Lee intimate and Singapore ambassador to the US Chan Heng Chee, who read drafts of the manuscript, points to a difference in style and subject matter. The first volume was a straight narrative, while the second is more policy-oriented. Published outside Singapore and Malaysia by HarperCollins, the book is not just intended for a domestic audience. A major chunk is devoted to foreign policy and international relations, focusing on Lee's encounters with world leaders. Relations with Malaysia take up just one chapter.

For his part, Lee denies he toned his words down. "It's written for posterity," he told Asiaweek in a 90-minute interview. "I have to write what I think or it's not worth writing. The words may be more modulated or measured, more rounded, but it has to be what I felt and still do." Straits Times editor-in-chief Cheong Yip Seng, who also read the manuscript prior to publication, says that he was surprised by Lee's candor. "The author had to cover prickly issues, in particular those affecting bilateral relations. They were not fudged."

Philippine readers will discover, for instance, that Singapore offered to host deposed president Ferdinand Marcos in exile, but the strongman chose instead to go to Hawaii. After Marcos and his family arrived in Honolulu, the ex-leader changed his mind but it was too late.

To be sure, From Third World is hardly a dry policy-wonk handbook. On several fronts, Lee tells it as he sees it. Predictably, he has upset some Singapore opposition figures. Medical doctor Lee Siew Choh, who turns 83 in November, was chairman of the Barisan Sosialis at the time of independence. He is vexed by Lee Kuan Yew's description of Barisan as communist. "It wasn't at all," he argues. "He always talks about us being communist, but that was all propaganda to justify the suppression of Barisan." Dr. Lee, who spent 12 days in detention during that period, insists that Barisan never abandoned its constitutional struggle against the ruling People's Action Party in favor of illegal dissent. "He's just trying to make the people forget it was the PAP's actions that decimated the Barisan."

But for Singapore watchers, the book is filled with precious insights into Lee Kuan Yew's thinking, as well as new information about post-independence Singapore and Lee's family. It cements the commonly held view that the former prime minister has long been a useful, though informal, mediator and adviser to both sides in the cross-strait face-off between China and Taiwan. (Knowing Lee was a "good friend" of Taipei leader Chiang Ching-kuo, Deng Xiaoping once asked the Singapore PM "to convey [Deng's] personal regards to 'Mr. Chiang.'") And the chapters dealing with the U.S. and his meetings with American presidents from Lyndon Johnson to George Bush demonstrate Lee's stature as a spokesman for Asia and how highly Washington has valued his advice. Western leaders regularly seek his counsel because of his "very impressive track record turning Singapore from swamp to success story," says diplomat Chan. "He has credibility, is articulate and straight talking, and focuses very sharply in his analysis. He comes out with a solution."

Indeed, the first section of the new book - 15 chapters on various aspects of Singapore's political and economic development - underscores how Lee and his team took an almost step-by-step approach to nation-building. Under pressure and feeling under threat, they adopted pragmatic solutions. For example, at the risk of upsetting Malaysia, the Singaporeans sought Israel's help to build a military force and organize its defenses. Lee recalls how to disguise the presence of a team of Israeli advisers in the country, "we called them 'Mexicans.' They looked swarthy enough."

Much of this early part of the book is clearly intended for the home audience. "For the first time, Singaporeans have an insider's account of how their country got from almost going under 35 years ago to what it is today," says editor Cheong. "This is not just any insider, but the key player in the Singapore story who remains very involved today in shaping its future." Cheong reckons that young Singaporeans will benefit from reading Lee's account. "Most haven't a clue about how Singapore became what it is today."

In a rare vignette, Lee writes affectionately about a grandson, deputy premier Lee Hsien Loong's second child, who was born an albino and is, it turns out, mildly autistic, though "intellectually normal." Yipeng, he says, "has turned out to be good-natured and the best-behaved and most likeable of my grandchildren." In a telling passage, Lee quotes from a letter that Hsien Loong sent to his university tutor in Cambridge in 1972, explaining why he had chosen to stay in Singapore and not become a professional mathematician. "Singapore is where I belong and where I want to be," his son wrote. At times, Lee comes across as not a little crotchety. "We are fond of [our grandchildren], but feel that their parents are overindulgent," he reveals. Lee does not even bother to mention by name Singapore Democratic Party leader Chee Soon Juan, possibly the most prominent young opposition figure in the country today. Instead, he dismisses Chee as "a plausible young lecturer." From Third World isn't the bombshell that its predecessor was. But, after digesting this tour de force, whether they agree with him or not, readers will recognize in Lee a true Asian legend.