"For decades, Hong Kong has maintained precarious freedom at the edge of competing world powers. In City on the Edge, Ho-fung Hung offers a timely and engaging account of Hong Kong's development from precolonial times to the present, with particular focus on the post 1997 handover period....

Introduction: Why Hong Kong? -- Reading Hong Kong in place and time -- Origins and growth, 1840s-1930s -- Transformations of Hong Kong, 1930-1970 -- Toward the twenty-first century: speed and paradox -- Hong Kong and its regional context -- Hong Kong and cities of East Asia -- Diasporic Hong Kong