I have to admit I was skeptical of this book when I first saw it and I probably wouldn’t have read it if I hadn’t received it as a gift. The top of the cover says “[t]he terrifying memoir of life in North Korea that our nation’s leaders want you to read.” Our nation’s leaders? [...]
“Why China Will Never Rule the World.” That’s quite a bold title, and when I first heard of it I imagined a point-by-point rebuttal to Martin Jacques’ “When China Rules the World.” Then I learned it was a travelogue, and was even more intrigued; how do you prove such a grand claim through a tourist [...]
In 2005, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew paraphrased Churchill by describing North Korea as “a riddle wrapped up in an enigma.” It certainly isn’t always easy to understand the rationale for the country’s foreign policies, not to speak of its management of the economy that since the 1990s has misfired so badly that millions have starved. [...]
Many books have been written about China that either focus on the relatively recent past or write with no historical or cultural perspective. I’ve wanted to see a book about China that took both their culture and their view on diplomacy and geopolitics into consideration when discussing the changes over the last half century along [...]
