APP'S BOOKS OF THE WEEK of May 4, 2026

 📚Books of the Week📖

Privileged but Powerless: How North Korean Elite Grievances Reveal the Regime’s Greatest Weakness

                By Jieun Baek, Doctorate Student of Public Policy, 

Oxford University

PURCHASE BOOK (5/5/2026)

Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with escapees from Pyongyang, Baek examines how members of this privileged class, granted access to forbidden information and superior material benefits, publicly uphold the regime despite their underlying discontent. Baek argues that this performative loyalty, born of fear and a desire to survive, masks a critical vulnerability within the regime’s core.

Eurasian Maritime Geopolitics: The United States and China in an Age of Indo-Pacific Transformation

By Kent E. Calder, Director, Edwin O. Reischauer Center 

for East Asian Studies

PURCHASE BOOK (2/7/2025)

Examines the strategic geography of the sea lanes from Northeast Asia through the Indian Ocean to Europe, through which much of the world's energy and information flow. Changing technology and economic patterns have profoundly transformed the global significance of those passageways since the end of the Cold War, with fateful consequences for the strategic calculations of both the United States and a rising China. A timely contribution to today's geopolitics.

Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work

By Alvin E. Roth, Professor, Stanford University and Harvard University

PURCHASE BOOK (5/12/2026)

Disagreements are fierce because arguments on both sides are often made in uncompromising moral or religious terms. Roth asserts that we can make progress on these and other difficult topics if we view them as markets—tools to help decide who gets what—and understand how those markets can be fine-tuned to be more functional. Markets don’t have to allow everything or ban everything. 

*Books purchased through the links here support Asia Policy Point*

Books selected on the APP website are not a sign of endorsement. 

They are simply new and interesting.