100 books like Foreign Devil

By Richard Hughes,

Here are 100 books that Foreign Devil fans have personally recommended if you like Foreign Devil. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism

Bill Emmott Author Of Deterrence, Diplomacy and the Risk of Conflict Over Taiwan

From my list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been addicted to Asia ever since serving in Tokyo for three marvelous years as The Economist’s correspondent in 1983-86 and since watching the rise of China, India, and South-East Asia from my privileged perch as editor-in-chief of The Economist in 1993-2006. For much of those years I have been writing about politics and economics rather than war and peace, but two key events recently convinced me to study something new. These were Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and then my beloved Japan’s decision to shake off its post-war shackles and build up its own defense forces in order to help prevent something like that from happening in Asia, too. 

Bill's book list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia

Bill Emmott Why did Bill love this book?

If war is to be avoided, it is vital to understand the thinking of both sides. Rana Mitter was for many years the top historian on China at Oxford University and has now moved to Harvard to become chair of US-Asia Relations. History is not the only driver of conflicts, but it is an important one, and Rana’s book really helped me understand how modern China has been shaped by its war-torn 20th-century history, especially the 1937-45 war that China fought with Japan.

By Rana Mitter,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked China's Good War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Chinese leaders once tried to suppress memories of their nation's brutal experience during World War II. Now they celebrate the "victory"-a key foundation of China's rising nationalism.

For most of its history, the People's Republic of China limited public discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of victimization-and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful, the meaning of the war is changing. Rana Mitter argues that China's reassessment of the World War II years is central to its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting…


Book cover of The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between

Bill Emmott Author Of Deterrence, Diplomacy and the Risk of Conflict Over Taiwan

From my list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been addicted to Asia ever since serving in Tokyo for three marvelous years as The Economist’s correspondent in 1983-86 and since watching the rise of China, India, and South-East Asia from my privileged perch as editor-in-chief of The Economist in 1993-2006. For much of those years I have been writing about politics and economics rather than war and peace, but two key events recently convinced me to study something new. These were Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and then my beloved Japan’s decision to shake off its post-war shackles and build up its own defense forces in order to help prevent something like that from happening in Asia, too. 

Bill's book list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia

Bill Emmott Why did Bill love this book?

I learned a huge amount about the history of Taiwan, not just about the fraught relations between America and Communist China over that island during the last three-quarters of a century. What the book especially showed me was how capricious and inconsistent American presidents have been about the issue, from Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon right through to Trump, but also how Chinese attitudes have varied, too.

By Sulmaan Wasif Khan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Struggle for Taiwan as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A concise, definitive history of the precarious relationship among the US, China, and Taiwan

As tensions over Taiwan escalate, the United States and China stand on the brink of a catastrophic war. Resolving the impasse demands we understand how it began. In 1943, the Allies declared that Japanese-held Taiwan would return to China at the conclusion of World War II. The Chinese civil war led to a change of plans. The Communist Party came to power in China and the defeated Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, where he was afforded US protection. The specter of conflict has loomed…


Book cover of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century

Bill Emmott Author Of Deterrence, Diplomacy and the Risk of Conflict Over Taiwan

From my list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been addicted to Asia ever since serving in Tokyo for three marvelous years as The Economist’s correspondent in 1983-86 and since watching the rise of China, India, and South-East Asia from my privileged perch as editor-in-chief of The Economist in 1993-2006. For much of those years I have been writing about politics and economics rather than war and peace, but two key events recently convinced me to study something new. These were Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and then my beloved Japan’s decision to shake off its post-war shackles and build up its own defense forces in order to help prevent something like that from happening in Asia, too. 

Bill's book list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia

Bill Emmott Why did Bill love this book?

The chaos of the Trump foreign policy in 2016-20 always brings a mix of horror and entertainment, but Josh Rogin’s book also gave me an especially revealing quotation from Trump; when in 2019, he said to an unnamed senator, “Taiwan is like two feet from China. We are eight thousand miles away. If they invade there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it”. That statement is certainly wrong, but it illustrates perfectly that the key dangers arise from political will and political inconsistency.

By Josh Rogin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Chaos Under Heaven as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The explosive, behind-the-scenes story of Donald Trump's high-stakes confrontation with Beijing, from an award-winning Washington Post columnist and peerless observer of the U.S.-China relationship

There was no calm before the storm. Donald Trump's surprise electoral victory shattered the fragile understanding between Washington and Beijing, putting the most important relationship of the twenty-first century in the hands of a novice who had bitterly attacked China from the campaign trail. Almost as soon as he entered office, Trump brought to a boil the long-simmering rivalry between the two countries, while also striking up a "friendship" with Chinese president Xi Jinping - whose…


Book cover of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

Bill Emmott Author Of Deterrence, Diplomacy and the Risk of Conflict Over Taiwan

From my list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been addicted to Asia ever since serving in Tokyo for three marvelous years as The Economist’s correspondent in 1983-86 and since watching the rise of China, India, and South-East Asia from my privileged perch as editor-in-chief of The Economist in 1993-2006. For much of those years I have been writing about politics and economics rather than war and peace, but two key events recently convinced me to study something new. These were Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and then my beloved Japan’s decision to shake off its post-war shackles and build up its own defense forces in order to help prevent something like that from happening in Asia, too. 

Bill's book list on how to avoid WWIII starting in Asia

Bill Emmott Why did Bill love this book?

Even when dealing with serious matters, we all need to stretch our imaginations. Elliott Ackerman and James Stavridis’s novel did that for me, exploring with the expertise of a former US Marine and of a veteran of the US Navy quite how a modern war might break out and play out, with artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and, yes, nuclear weapons all playing a part in the scenario this novel sketched out.

By Elliot Ackerman, James Stavridis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked 2034 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A chilling geopolitical thriller and real-world cautionary tale presenting a dark yet very possible future of war between the US and China - from two former military officers and award-winning authors

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * 'A rippingly good read' Wired
______________

12 March 2034.

In the South China Sea, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is conducting routine freedom of navigation patrol while US Marine aviator Major Chris 'Wedge' Mitchell tests a new stealth technology near Iranian airspace.

By the end of the day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of…


Book cover of Berlin Diary

Jim Carr Author Of Camp X Doublecross

From my list on World war novels for people who love history and fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

The Second World War has always fascinated me, starting when I first entered school. The war had just started and it became even more real with each successive class when we were encouraged to buy war-saving stamps. On the home front, we experienced blackouts and mock air raids. Sugar, meat, butter, alcohol, and even gasoline were rationed. My cousins were overseas and in the thick of it. They always made sure I had an airplane model at Christmas. And as the war wound to a close, they sent me a cap from one from one of the German soldiers. It still intrigues me and still lives in my head.

Jim's book list on World war novels for people who love history and fiction

Jim Carr Why did Jim love this book?

You can feel the danger lurking behind every day as radio journalist Shirer watched Hitler build on one horror after another.

Reynolds writes in a way you can hear him, in a stye that echoed his broadcasts. Even after the declaration of war, “life here is still quite normal… the theatres and movies, all open and jammed.”

And this item when he went to the front: “At last will get a chance–maybe–to see how this German colossus has been doing it, walking through Belgium, Holland and now, Northern France, so fast.”

What I like about Shirer’s approach is that he takes you along with him on every day’s events. There were so many things he touched on that often got missed in other books. I enjoyed being with him each day and you will, too.

By William L. Shirer,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Berlin Diary as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

By the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day, eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is now available in a new paperback edition. CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s-specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany. Berlin Diary first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the…


Book cover of Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War

Susan Blumberg-Kason Author Of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong

From my list on rediscovered women's history with badass book covers.

Why am I passionate about this?

My name is Susan Blumberg-Kason and I write books about strong women who have a strong sense of place. I think we are all partly defined by where we live and I enjoy examining how our environment informs our choices. My first book centers around someone I know very well—me! My memoir, Good Chinese Wife, takes place in my favorite city—Hong Kong—the place where I came of age and married for the first time, as well as China and a few cities in the US. I’m also a sucker for a good cover and I absolutely love my Good Chinese Wife cover!

Susan's book list on rediscovered women's history with badass book covers

Susan Blumberg-Kason Why did Susan love this book?

This cover completely drew me in because the typewriter, cityscape, and WWII airplanes all show an urgency and a story just waiting to be told. Cohen writes about prominent WWII foreign correspondents, including Dorothy Thompson and Frances Fineman, who travel the world in search of the latest war update. It was certainly not as easy to get from country to country back then—especially across vast oceans—so I really appreciated their determination to travel. 

By Deborah Cohen,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Last Call at the Hotel Imperial as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A prize-winning historian’s “effervescent” (The New Yorker) account of a close-knit band of wildly famous American reporters who, in the run-up to World War II, took on dictators and rewrote the rules of modern journalism

“High-speed, four-lane storytelling . . . Cohen’s all-action narrative bursts with colour and incident.”—Financial Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR, BookPage

They were an astonishing group: glamorous, gutsy, and irreverent to the bone. As cub reporters in the 1920s, they roamed across a war-ravaged world, sometimes perched atop mules on wooden saddles,…


Book cover of Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989

Yang Huang Author Of Living Treasures

From my list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in China during the years of the one-child policy. In 1989 I joined millions of people in the pro-democracy protests. Our hope and joy were crushed by the Tiananmen Square Massacre. A year later, I left China and came to the States. I wanted to write a story about the students’ fight but create a more meaningful arc. It took me twenty years of soul searching to find my story. At the heart of my novel Living Treasures is a metaphor for the Tiananmen Square Massacre. My heroine continues the fight by doing grassroots work and helping rural women, who are victimized by the one-child policy.

Yang's book list on China’s one-child policy and Tiananmen Square protests

Yang Huang Why did Yang love this book?

Philip J. Cunningham joined his Chinese friends from May 3 to June 4 in 1989, as a supporter, journalist, and witness in the Tiananmen Square protests. Tiananmen Moon chronicles the protests, hunger strike, students’ leadership, their internal friction, and Cunningham’s meeting with Chai Ling before the massacre. From an American bystander’s perspective, Cunningham voices his concerns about the peer pressure among students, and a few self-claimed radical leaders using the same rhetoric and tactic as the regime to seize power and escalate conflicts. To this day, the Tiananmen Square protests are obliterated by the propaganda machine in mainland China. Tiananmen Moon is a remarkable testament capturing the plaintive and lyrical beauty of a dream that continues to haunt China today.

By Philip J. Cunningham,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tiananmen Moon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this book is now available.

This compelling book provides a vivid firsthand account of the student demonstrations and massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Uniquely placed as a Western observer drawn into active participation through Chinese friends in the uprising, Philip J Cunningham offers a remarkable day-by-day account of Beijing students desperately trying to secure the most coveted political real estate in China in the face of ever more daunting government countermoves. Tiananmen Moon takes the reader into the thick of the 1989 protests while also following the parallel response of an unprepared but resourceful…


Book cover of Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern

Annika A. Culver Author Of Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo

From my list on Manchukuo (Manchuria).

Why am I passionate about this?

I began formally researching Japanese occupied northeast China in the late nineties in graduate school at Harvard University. Manchuria always fascinated me as a confluence of cultures: even prior to the 19th century, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Russians, Eastern Europeans, Mongols, and indigenous peoples circulated within the region in China's periphery. In the 1930s until 1945, Japanese propaganda portrayed the area as a "utopia" under Confucian principles, but in the mid-1990s, the horrors of the occupation for colonized peoples as well as imperial Japan's biological weapons experimentation during the Asia-Pacific War came to light in Japan and elsewhere as former Japanese settlers as well as researchers began to tell their stories.

Annika's book list on Manchukuo (Manchuria)

Annika A. Culver Why did Annika love this book?

One of the first scholars to write a full-length monograph on Manchukuo, Duara delves into the Chinese and Japanese writers who viewed northeast China under Japanese occupation as a means to envision their own Pan-Asianist ideals. He analyses this in the context of a broader "East Asian modern" in Manchukuo, and utilizes political and literary sources to unearth previous connections with previous iterations and currents of Chinese nationalism tied to the Pan-Asianism of the early twentieth century.

By Prasenjit Duara,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sovereignty and Authenticity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this powerful and provocative book, Prasenjit Duara uses the case of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in northeast China from 1932-1945, to explore how such antinomies as imperialism and nationalism, modernity and tradition, and governmentality and exploitation interacted in the post-World War I period. His study of Manchukuo, which had a population of 40 million and was three times the area of Japan, catalyzes a broader understanding of new global trends that characterized much of the twentieth century. Asking why Manchukuo so desperately sought to appear sovereign, Duara examines the cultural and political resources it mobilized to make claims…


Book cover of Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present

David Austin Beck Author Of The Greek Prince of Afghanistan

From my list on understanding the Scythians.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm an author who believes that history contains an endless number of stories of how our past peers dealt with and contributed to the tension, fusion, and reinvention that is human existence. When writing The Greek Prince of Afghanistan, which focuses on the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom of ancient Afghanistan, I included a Scythian character, because I felt the novel’s story, like humanity’s story, is best told through multiple perspectives. The above books helped me greatly in that effort.

David's book list on understanding the Scythians

David Austin Beck Why did David love this book?

While only one chapter of Empires of the Silk Road is dedicated to the Scythians, this book is a compelling introduction to Central Eurasian peoples throughout history. Beckwith’s work stabs right at the heart of ancient and modern writings that frame the Scythians and other nomadic peoples within a pejorative “barbarian” framework. More than that, he explores how societies such as the Scythians viewed themselves, which differs greatly from other approaches, which use them only as a foil to more sedentary peoples.

By Christopher I Beckwith,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Empires of the Silk Road as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the…


Book cover of East Asia, Latin America, and the Decolonization of Transpacific Studies

Ignacio López-Calvo Author Of The Mexican Transpacific: Nikkei Writing, Visual Arts, and Performance

From my list on Asian-Latin American exchanges.

Why am I passionate about this?

Extensive research on cultural production by Latin American authors of Asian ancestry has given me a comprehensive understanding of the development of Transpacific studies. For the last decade, my research has focused, for the most part, on South-South intercultural exchanges and cultural production by and about Latin American authors of Asian descent. I have written five books dealing with these topics: 2008 Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture (2009), The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru (2013), Dragons in the Land of the Condor: Writing Tusán in Peru (2014), Japanese Brazilian Saudades: Diasporic Identities and Cultural Production (2019), and The Mexican Transpacific: Nikkei Writing, Visual Arts, Performance (forthcoming).  

Ignacio's book list on Asian-Latin American exchanges

Ignacio López-Calvo Why did Ignacio love this book?

This book uses a transpacific, decolonial, and interdisciplinary approach to study the connections between Latin America and East Asia, concentrating on contemporary commodity extraction and exchanges. The book explores South-South exchanges without Global North metropolitan mediations, thus recentering East Asia-Latin America as an epistemological lens through which to consider these sophisticated networks and produce new knowledge. In my view, the originality of this book resides first in the interdisciplinary connection it makes between the decolonial project and transpacific studies, and secondly, in the two-pronged approach from two unfortunately often disconnected academic perspectives: Latin American and East Asian Studies. 

By Chiara Olivieri (editor), Jordi Serrano-Muñoz (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked East Asia, Latin America, and the Decolonization of Transpacific Studies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this collective work, researchers from different disciplines reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of decolonizing transpacific studies through the lens of a few paradigmatic case-studies that deal with connections between East Asia and Latin America. The present book offers a productive problematization of the idea of the transpacific as a concept and a space that is not restricted to a single definition. We defend that the transpacific can instead promote an understanding of agents and experiences that share many common traits that have been generally overlooked by a hegemonic interpretation of knowledge and the relationship between regions.By fostering an…


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