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This is an important book but will, I think, be considered important for reasons the authors did not have in mind when they sent it off to the press. Let me first reveal my prejudices as an academic economist as they influence my approach to this work. First, I do not like works that try to explain complex economic and social phenomena on the basis of a few or, here, one factor. The title of this book should be read with the stress on the first word: The Key, and not on the overused word "miracle". I will similarly be suspicious of any work entitled "The Key to the Asian Financial/Economic Meltdown" or similar. Second, I am often uncomfortable when a book covers a number of disparate countries and believes they can be explained through one overall argument. There will always be a few countries that just cannot be made to fit into a particular pattern however bravely the authors try. This is the case here, with Indonesia being missing from some of the statistics and there are fewer than all eight elsewhere, sometimes for justifiable reasons. The exceptions might be a clue as to why the argument is faulty. The economies studied here are the eight economies that are said to "have overcome underdevelopment" and are Japan, The Republic of Korea,

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