Pacific Destiny by Robert S. Elegant

A portrait of the major countries of Asia, the continent that has economically overtaken Europe. It explains why and how Asia has become the future of the Western World and why the United States, above all, will ignore the challenge of Asia at its peril. For 30 years Robert Elegant covered Asia as a correspondant for the "Los Angeles Times" and "Newsweek". He saw war and revolution from the frontiers of Korea and China to the jungles of Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. Two years ago, he returned to Asia for a protracted journey of rediscovery. This is his reporrt on the transformation of the places he knows intimately into major industrial powers, particularly Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. He talked with prime ministers and prostitutes, with factory workers, peasants, refugees and artists, mostly in their own languages. Travelling tens of thousands of miles, he saw and captured the dynamics of change, revealing what it means to us not only inn political and economic terms, but in human terms. Robert Elegant also wrote "Manchu", "Mandarin", "From a Far Land" and "Mao's Great Revolution".