We all know that China is becoming an economic powerhouse, India is close on China's heels, Korea is a leader of high tech innovations, and Japan has some of the world's most dominant and influential companies. But what we don't know is how - since the end of World War II - Asia has transformed itself into the rising force of the global economy. Who were the people behind this miraculous transformation? In "The Miracle", "Time" magazine and former "Wall Street Journal" reporter Michael Schuman offers an insightful and engaging historical narrative that presents the dramatic history through the stories of the participants themselves. This group is an amazingly diverse one and includes dictators and democrats, generals and technocrats, economists and engineers, even a medical doctor. Some of the people featured and interviewed in the book will likely be well known to readers (like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore or Kim Dae Jung of South Korea); others may be introduced to most readers for the first time (like India's prime minister Manmohan Singh, Liu Chuanzhi, the risk-taking founder of PC maker Lenovo, or Li Ka-Shing, the richest-and most secretive-tycoon of Hong Kong). All of them, however, shared a dream: to uplift Asia to its proper place of influence in the world and eradicate the poverty around them.