A Doctor in the Prime Minister’s Office Memoirs of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

The book states that despite the exciting political and economic experience Dr. Mahathir Mohamad undertook over the course of 22 years as Prime Minister of Malaysia, before returning to power again, he underwent a difficult struggle to transform his country from a marginalized, poor, agricultural nation into an advanced, regionally active, industrial nation, politically and economically free from Western hegemony. Mahathir Mohamad’s personal memoirs, which explore his significant political and economic experiences and his intellectual and social observations, were not published until much later. He needed several years of writing and documentation to capture the most important details of this experience, and these memoirs were not published until mid-2011.
This book does not tell Mahathir Mohamad’s personal story, but rather the story of Malaysia, a country that emerged exhausted from British colonialism and was keen to remain underdeveloped and subsistent, living off the sale of rubber and tin to the colonizers. However, through a long political and economic struggle and the presence of a unique leader, he was able to transform himself from a marginalized agricultural country into one of the most prominent economic and industrial nations. He raised the average per capita income from $350 to $8,000, and made Malays, who accounted for only 2 percent of the domestic economy, true partners in their country’s economy.