Foreign Affairs’ editors and book reviewers selected the very best of the hundreds of books on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine in 2023. Yasheng Huang's and Noah Nathan's books were among their picks.
The rise and fall of the EAST: How exams, autocracy, stability, and technology brought China success, and why they might lead to its decline
by Yasheng Huang, faculty director of the Center's MIT-China Program
In this wide-ranging and shrewd analysis of the Chinese state, Huang predicts that the crackdown on freedom under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s modernized version of imperial rule may bring an end to the country’s brief spurt of dynamism.
The scarce state: Inequality and political power in the hinterland
by Noah L Nathan, associated faculty of the Center's MIT-Africa Program
Nathan makes the counterintuitive claim that a limited state can still have a large impact on local populations, focusing on the hinterland of northern Ghana to show how the thinness of the state in a region can still powerfully shape social inequality and local power relations.
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