Few groups are more secretive than the Asian “godfathers,” the tiny group of obscenely wealthy businessmen who control the economic fates of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. Mysterious, shrewd, and ruthless, these tycoons represented eight of the twenty-five wealthiest people on the planet in the 1990s and they continue to command multibillion-dollar personal fortunes, controlling everything from banking and real estate to shipping and gambling—yet their names would not be familiar to regular readers of The Wall Street Journal. Who are they and how do they do it? That is the question Joe Studwell, author of the acclaimed book The China Dream, answers in this incisive behind-the-scenes exploration of the outsize figures behind the veil. Studwell has spent fifteen years as a reporter in the region and uses his unprecedented access to paint intimate and revealing portraits of the godfathers—who they really are and how they make, build, and maintain their fortunes. Asian Godfathers is an explosive book that lifts the curtain on a world of staggering secrecy and hypocrisy and reveals—for the first time—who the leaders of one of the world’s most important and tumultuous markets really are.

資深中國事務觀察傢，《中國經濟季刊》(China Economic Quarterly)的總編輯和《中國熱》(The China Dream的颱灣譯名)一書的作者，在歐亞各地擔任自由撰稿人及媒體主持人長達10年。1991年至2000年間常駐香港及北京。