Asian Godfathers by Joe Studwell (Atlantic Monthly Press)

You can't judge a book by its cover, or in this case by its title either. Anyone who fails to keep that tired old truism in mind when buying Joe Studwell's latest is in for a very big surprise. This book is not a rollicking romp through the Asian underworld, or the sort of glossy, glitzy true crime extravaganza that poses as investigative journalism. After all, Mr. Studwell writes for the Economist, not for Vanity Fair, and he admits that his title "is more than a little tongue-in-cheek."

Tycoons is the correct term for these "colourful, obscenely rich and interesting people" who dominate the economic turf of Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. Governments come and go, underworld figures rise and are deposed, but the tycoons continue to flourish. Not even the economic meltdown of the late 90s significantly diminished their fortunes. Instead many of them became even more wealthy during that financial bloodbath.

Immigration and colonialism were the groundwork from which these fortunes came. The large influx of Chinese, Arabs, Persians, and Indians provided a hungry and willing labor force for colonial powers, eventually becoming "economic entrepreneurs," while the local aristocracy were used to govern the native population, becoming "political entrepreneurs." Long after the disappearance of colonialism, these divisions still remain in place.

Mr. Studwell makes it clear that the wealth of the tycoons is based upon monopolies, cartels, and perhaps most of all, a hardworking and frugal labor force who are encouraged, if not forced, to use saving accounts. Banks in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, with their huge pool of "excessive savers," are ready sources of investment capital and "money makes more money."

Putting much of the blame for the Asian financial crisis upon the tycoons and their freewheeling financial practices, this book bristles with fierce economic facts that will deter many a casual reader. Those who persist will be horrified by the rapidity with which a region's economic structure can be reduced to rubble, and may wonder not if, but when, their own financial security will be devoured by shortsighted greed.

In the midst of all of the history and the economic gloom and the politics that are straightforwardly corrupt, the tycoons, the "godfathers," prevail through the book with the same resilience and charisma that sustain them in life. Chin Sophonpanich, the Thai creator of one of Southeast Asia's leading banks, is remembered by another financial leader as "absolutely charming—he had about six mistresses." Li Ka-shing, number ten on the 2006 Forbes list of the world's richest men, responded to the kidnapping of his son by withdrawing one billion Hong Kong dollars in cash, so huge a sum that the kidnapper couldn't fit it all into his car and had to make two trips to carry it away. An unnamed tycoon, whose son was sent a box of chocolates by a business rival, told his offspring to feed a piece to his dog, and if that wasn't fatal, "try one on his wife."

Although Mr. Studwell concludes with the confession that he used the "godfathers" as a "structural sleight" to convey a larger history, ultimately they take possession of his book with the same ease and expertise that they would absorb any encroachment on their territory. And why not? It all belongs to them.~Janet Brown

China To Me by Emily Hahn (out of print in the United States)

Emily Hahn was brilliant, beautiful and shameless. Arriving in Shanghai in 1935, she rapidly scandalized the city's community of Westerners by taking up a Chinese lover, an addiction to opium and a gibbon named Mr. Mills, who was her constant escort. (She was once enraged by a dinner party invitation that ended with "Regret we cannot extend the invitation to Mr. Mills.") Later, when Emily announced that she and Charles Boxer, a married British army officer, were going to have a child, an American dowager's huffy response was, "Some women will stop at nothing to bring discredit to our nation."

Although her personal life makes dazzling reading, if that were all there was to Emily Hahn, it would be easy to dismiss her as a precursor to Bridget Jones. Emily, however, was no literary bimbo. She was a talented and professional writer who meticulously reported what she saw and how she lived in China before and during World War II.

Chosen by the Soong sisters to be their official biographer, Emily followed them to Chungking, where Japanese planes rained bombs upon Chiang Kai-shek's government and where Madame Chiang poured her legendary energy into making marmalade. Watching the bombing of the British Embassy while picnicking in the neighboring hills, Emily gives a vividly detailed description of the visual spectacle while confessing, "Sometimes it was too much for our nerves."

When World War II began and Japanese troops seized Hong Kong, Emily was there, with her newborn daughter whose father was now a wounded prisoner of war. It was a time during which she resisted the melodrama that could well have taken over her life. Death, starvation, looting and rape are all in the backdrop of Emily’s story, while never being allowed center stage. As she manages to find food for her baby and for Charles, as she makes her way through the Japanese bureaucracy in a successful attempt to stay out of an internment camp, as she learns how to maneuver in a black market economy, Emily tells her story in the calm, dispassionate tones of a woman who had no energy to spare for flamboyant emotional displays.

Explaining why gold and diamonds are the key to wartime survival, or the stark terror felt after waking up after a night of serious drinking to discover that while in her cups she had slapped the Japanese chief of Foreign Affairs, or the shame of listening to American propaganda broadcasts that extolled the success of bombing raids on Hong Kong which had in truth accomplished nothing at all, Emily gives a clear and rarely seen picture of war, the one that is shared by the noncombatants who struggle to survive.

Emily rather unfairly dismissed China To Me as an "egotistical history" but generations of readers have given it the status of a classic. As resilient as Ms. Hahn herself, this book has bounced in and out of print since it was first published in 1946, and waits now in used bookstores across the world to be rediscovered one more time.~Janet Brown