1996年，也就是使東南亞經濟大逆轉的亞洲金融危機爆發前一年，《富比士》雜誌（Forbes）在其公布全球年度最富有個人排行榜上，東南亞地區商業鉅亨在排行榜前二十五名中佔了八位，在前五十名中則佔了十三位。對整個地區所有經濟產出加起來都無法超過一個全球五百強私營企業的東南亞而言，其首富人數卻在全世界最富有的二十五人中佔了超過三分之一。這些人就是亞洲教父的先鋒，每位名下都有超過四十億美元的資產，其中包括了李嘉誠、郭鶴年（Robert Kwok）、謝國民（Dhanin Chearavanont）、林紹良（Liem Sioe Liong）、鄭周敏（Tan Yu）、郭令明（Kwek Leng Beng），以及一群擁有十億到三十億美元資產的商業鉅亨。 整個香港和東南亞的經濟實際上只由四十到五十個家族所主導。這些家族的經營事業跨足銀行業、地產業、船運業、糖業、博弈業到伐木業。巔峰時期，全世界最富有的二十五個家族中，來自東南亞的家族就佔了八個。 對比這些富商所生存的國家而言，這些極為有錢的鉅商們似乎形成了一個令人尷尬的強烈對比。 本書帶大家一覽亞洲商業大亨們的世界。包括香港首富李嘉誠；賭場大亨、也是十七名子女的父親何鴻燊；馬來西亞雲頂高原遊樂區創始人林梧桐；印尼的幾位銀行家，以及由工友變成菲律賓菸業大亨的陳永裁。 透過這些神祕且迷人的大亨生活背後，作者周博深入探討這個擁有五億人口區域當中的經濟和政治問題，帶領讀者了解巨亨們何以對當地經濟造成影響，如何度過亞洲金融危機，同時揭露隱藏在權力、與巨大財富背後的種種驚人事實。

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.