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rogue regime | the chinese | hungry ghosts | lost country

ROGUE REGIME
Oxford University Press, 2005

Becker makes a powerful case for defining Kim once and for all--not as an ordinary, if nuclear-tipped, dictator, but as an extraordinarily skillful tyrant presiding over the worst man-made catastrophe in modern history.... A highly readable narrative that unearths Kim's history, probes his decision-making style and details the grotesque consequences of those decisions. His book is a subtle plea to the world to expand its focus beyond the--admittedly important--nuclear issue to the vast humanitarian catastrophe unfolding under Kim Jong Il's gaze."--Joshua Kurlantzick, New York Times Book Review

"A very timely book.... Not for the faint-hearted. Mr. Becker takes an unblinking look at a dark regime that has made North Korea an international pariah, has elevated its rulers to the status of gods, and through torture and indoctrination reduced its subjects to virtual slaves.... The facts almost defy belief."--William Grimes, The New York Times

"A good new look at North Korea."--Nicholas Kristof, The New York Observer

"One of the few reporters to have firsthand experience of North Korea, veteran Asian correspondent Becker adds more nuance to a familiar story that the threat of nuclear arms, as well as the world's fifth largest standing army, are part of an attempt to force the rest of the globe to cater to a mad leader's megalomaniacal world.... Images of this grim state of affairs--which goes well beyond the Orwellian into the Kafkaesque--have been smuggled out over the past few years; how they came to be is described with rare concision by Becker.... Becker minces no words in warning that we may now have no way out of a monstrous situation."--Publishers Weekly

"Really is required reading. Becker, one of the few Western reporters to spend time in the Stalinist state, details the megalomania of Kim Jong Il--who staffed his palaces with the country's most beautiful women--and the madness of his regime, under which 2 million Koreans have reportedly died of starvation."--New York Post

"Jasper Becker is already known as one of the sharpest observers of contemporary China--and with Rogue Regime he immediately establishes himself as a premier observer, and critic, of Kim Jong Il's North Korea. Readers of this devastating book will be hard pressed to gainsay Becker's assertion that this dynastic dictatorship genuinely empowers evil--or to turn away from Becker's conclusion that only regime change is likely to bring a better life to the millions of ordinary North Koreans suffering under the Dear Leader's rule."--Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, The American Enterprise Institute

"By giving us an engrossing and well-documented examination of the North Korean regime, Becker proves that Kim Jong Il is in a category of tyranny all on his own and that engagement and appeasement only strengthen him. If you care at all about the slow and certain genocide of the North Korean people, he makes a powerful case for why regime change is the only answer." --Suzanne Scholte, President, Defense Forum Foundation

"Jasper Becker has warned us about North Korea, as a journalist with a sharp eye and an historian with perspective. North Korea with its bizarre cult of personality, its failed economy, its crackpot ideology and its relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is a major challenge in the twenty-first century. The reader will learn of the cunning control freaks who run the country. Becker's convincing book will make the task of the apologists for North Korea that much more difficult." --James Lilley, Former American Ambassador to South Korea and China

"Rogue Regime is the companion work to Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts , his earlier, well-documented account of 30 million famine deaths in Mao's China. Once again he pulls back a heavy veil of secrecy and reveals the immense suffering of the people of North Korea." --Dean Hirsch, President, World Vision International

Links to other reviews:
Asian Review of Books
Digital Chosunilbo
ESR
Foreign Affairs
The New York Times
The New York Times
The Globe and Mail
The New Yorker

rogue regime | the chinese | hungry ghosts | lost cuntry

THE CHINESE
John Murray
The Free Press, 2001
Oxford University paperback, 2002
Los Angeles Times Book of the Year

The Nation: ‘You won't see much of Jasper Becker's kind of reporting in the mainstream press, he has spent the past ten years tramping into areas of the country listening to people most other western journalists disregard … Becker is extraordinarily cautious and measured'

Washington Post: ‘He has been everywhere and asked every question … Becker's judgments are sustained by careful reporting … He is right in both details and analysis in his discussions of demographic change, environmental devastation, internal migration, police repression, grain policy, peasants, the collapse of the health system …'

Foreign Affairs: ‘A superb book ... Becker has the unique ability to weave together his own personal observations with clear summary analyses.'

Los Angeles Times: ‘Becker writes from the viewpoint of the Chinese people … He evaluates China on its own terms … He has transcended the obstacles of early books and come up with an enduring portrait of modern China …'

The New Yorker: ‘Becker's broad survey of the last twenty years of reform stresses the ongoing relevance of ancient history to modern China.'

International Herald Tribune: ‘Few Western correspondents in recent times have worked as hard at getting out of Beijing and finding out what is really happening in China … relentless investigation … sympathetic reporting and scholarship.'

Business Week: ‘In his impressive if pessimistic survey ... The author describes the huge strains facing the country as it attempts to modernize its economy while still being led by a suspicious and heavy handed communist Party'

Publisher's Weekly: ‘He is after contrast, not continuity, conundrums rather than convenient answers and he succeeds admirably.'

The Washington Times: 'A highly engaging new book attempts to shed new light on the more obscure parts of the Chinese population through a series of snapshots of Chinese life ... emphasizes the various segments of the Chinese populace ... discovering how each of these groups fits into the whole is one of the more satisfying aspects of the book.'

Financial Times: ‘One of the Beijing's most senior correspondents … he is an assiduous reporter and a shrewd analyst'

Daily Telegraph: ‘A captivating reporter.'

The Times: ‘His true forte is to get out on the road and observe what is actually going on'

The Sunday Times: ‘An enviable record of getting close to the truth in a phenomenally mercurial environment' … ‘Blends his eclectic sources with skill and panache' … The result is a captivating study of the fragility and volatility of the most populated nation on earth, and one with many lessons.'

Times Literary Supplement: ‘Jasper Becker specialises in writing about the difficult, even the untouchable … his work is rendered in a clear journalistic ‘style' … detailed, perceptive'. Becker does not overwhelm the read with literary effusion but offsets a mass of hard facts with characters and experiences which put flesh on statistical bones.'

Links to other reviews:
China Review Magazine
Asiaweek.com
Frommer's

rogue regime | the chinese | hungry ghosts | lost country

The Spectator: ‘Becker's book should be on the shelf of anyone interested in modern China, or indeed in the ghastly history of our times.'

The Daily Telegraph: ‘A sober convincing account'

The Daily Express: ‘Becker's literary Nuremberg'

The Sunday Times ‘Horrifyingly captivating book'

Financial Times: ‘A ground breaking study - This is a long overdue book and Becker must be credited with finally breaking the silence imposed by Mao… the book does not make for comfortable reading, but the reality of 30 million or more deaths written out of history because of fear and gullibility should not be comfortable.'

The Times: ‘Becker tells the story unforgettably'

The Economist: ‘Passionately but precisely, Mr Becker records the tragic results of one of the boldest examples of Utopian engineeering ever attempted.'

Independent on Sunday: ‘ A small memorial to those uncounted millions, a memorial the leaders who brought about those deaths will never erect.'

The Tablet: ‘Becker has written a devastating indictment of Mao and his followers'.

London Review of Books: ‘Becker does a good job of putting a human face on the famine ... Some of the anecdotes on Becker's book are testament to the almost unimaginable resilience of the human mind ... an unforgettable book'

Mail on Sunday Four page spread of extracts

New York Times: ‘Mr Becker's remarkable book which firmly establishes the Great Leap and the resulting famine as one of the worst atrocities of all time, strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place.'

New York Times Sunday edition: ‘There is at last an accessible – and, as it happens, a masterly – account of the greatest peacetime disaster of the twentieth century.' ‘a powerful important book.'

Washington Post: ‘Becker tells the stories well'

Chicago Tribune ‘sober, lucid, scary book'

New Yorker ‘This is a horrifying necessary book.'

International Herald Tribune: ‘This is a chilling book. But it should be doubly chilling for those academics, journalists and those in public life whose positions carry an obligation to ‘seek truth from facts' ... almost to a man, they failed to see what they did not want to see.'

Wall Street Journal: ‘No one has done a more meticulous, enlightening job of enshrouding the facts than Jasper Becker, a British journalist who really knows China. In his poignant and searing detailed account of the famine, Mr Becker reminds us of a political timebomb ticking in the heart of the New China … Mr Becker does what others have failed to do: He assigns blame.'

Christian Science Monitor: ‘In his sweeping and scrupulously researched book …. Documents how between 1958 and 1962 Mao's communization policy and industrial ‘great leap forward' caused a nationwide shortage of food.'

Le Monde: ‘Becker described what happened to the millions that disappeared using impeccable sources.'

L'Express: In a s ix-page pull-out, the French weekly newsmagazine reported ‘Certain journalists transcend their profession The British journalist Jasper Becker is one of them. He is one of the best interpreters between our world and that of the little understood world of China.'

View the L'Express Feature

Far Eastern Economic Review: ‘Becker gives us a tour de force of research, uncovering what has been an official secret in China ... Becker has written a book that anyone interested in China should read ... He not only provides crucial information about China's secret famine, he offers persuasive evidence that the Great Leap planted the seeds for an ensuing catastrophe, the Cultural Revolution.'

The Australian Review of Books: 'A riveting account ... ‘the first accessible account'

The Age: ‘Becker has tapped into secrecy, the shame and the complexity of this period to produce a remarkable book, surely one of the most important in aiding our understanding of contemporary China.'

Asiaweek: ''admirable history… that unravels the truth'

Also full page reviews in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Finan Econ. Tijd (Holland) and Het Financieele Dagsblad, Liberation and Il Giornale , Le Soir , De Volkskrant.

Links to other reviews:
National Review Book Service
Paul Musgrave.com
Foundation for Economic Education
The China Business Review 2002
Mindground.net
《饿鬼》书评

rogue regime | the chinese | hungry ghosts | lost country

Daily Telegraph: ‘Detailed ... wide-ranging ... excellent'

The Times: ‘Jasper Becker's book is particularly valuable because it gives sketches not only of Mongolia proper but of the neighbouring Russian autonomous republics of Buryatia and Tuva. He successfully bridges the gap between travel, reportage and history.'

Far Eastern Economic Review: ‘ He amazes and entertains … His description of life among the camel herds of South Gobi province is particularly evocative.'

The Guardian: ‘There is a mini-boom Mongolia books and the pick of the crop is by Jasper Becker … This enthralling book, part travel literature, part reportage, is also the quest for an answer to a riddle: how could the Mongol nation flurish so excessively then vanish?

Times Literary Supplement: ‘Lamas, nuns, politicians and scientists have compelling stories of murder, genocide and cultural destruction to tell. Their accounts are interspersed with excellent travellers' tales, and Becker's own trips … His account of Marshal Choibalsan's terror is an especially valuable piece of historical reconstruction.'

Hampstead & Highgate Express: ‘As an introduction to the ‘lost country' of Mongolia, it could hardly be bettered…a compassionate portrait of an abused and neglected people, wonderfully diverse and full of surprises.'

rogue regime | the chinese | hungry ghosts | lost country

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