📚Books of the Week📖
Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots
of North Korea's Personality Cult
By Jonathan Cheng, Beijing Bureau Chief, Wall Street Journal
PURCHASE BOOK 4/14/2026
North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, was the son of two fervent Christians who created his own cult-like ideolog, Kimilsungism. It was an excuse that fostered idolatry that elevated him, and his successor son and grandson, to Christlike status. Drawing on letters, diaries, and never-before-unearthed archival material, Cheng tells the true story of a country shrouded in fictions and oppression.
Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China
By Eyck Freymann, Hoover Fellow, Stanford University
PURCHASE BOOK 4/15/2026
Freymann argues that Washington's deterrence strategy, especially against China, must extend beyond conventional military power and familiar threats of mutually assured destruction. America must work with allies to develop a bold new vision of technological and economic statecraft--and a plan to secure its interests if deterrence fails.
West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East
By Mohammed Soliman, Senior Fellow, Middle East Institute
PURCHASE BOOK 2/3/2026
Soliman shows how the U.S. could lock in a new balance of power in the Eurasian supercontinent to offset China and Russia's efforts to disrupt the status quo and create a rival system. This new strategy rests on three layered coalitions ― geostrategic, hard-power, and geo-technological ― that together can anchor a stable order stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. But this will require a fundamental shift in U.S. grand strategy, with 'West Asia' at its core.
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Books selected on the APP website are not a sign of endorsement.
They are simply new and interesting.
