Dajia hao from Beijing—I’m back home after a fifth and final week of taking KOREAN MESSIAH out for a spin. It’s been equally exhausting and exciting, and I’m grateful for all the love and support—and glad to have made it back to China before Donald Trump graced us with his presence.
I’ve only just had a chance to exhale from the Trump-Xi summit, but I wanted to put a lid on the first month of KOREAN MESSIAH before more time slips away. A quick trawl through my calendar coughed up some statistics: Over my five weeks on tour, I gave 41 public and private book talks across seven cities, and recorded another 16 podcasts, radio appearances, and television hits (including NPR and WBUR’s Here & Now, GZERO Media with Ian Bremmer, and others yet to hit the airwaves).
All of which is to say that I’m now very well practiced in talking about my book, and frankly, pretty happy this past week to be talking about nothing but Trump and Xi. (And yes, I did a lot of that.)
My final book tour stop, Toronto, featured some of my favourite talks, including with the Princeton Alumni Association of Canada, the University of Toronto, St. Andrew’s College, CBC’s Ideas Podcast, the Canadaland podcast, and HanVoice. They were all a lot of fun!
At that final event, Jason Shim, one of my childhood classmates—from age seven to thirteen—surprised me with a custom t-shirt for my “eternal book tour.” I’ll cherish it! (And my parents also threw me a launch party at home, which was sweet.)
All in all, the book has been getting a great reception on the road and generating some nice reviews. The New Yorker named KOREAN MESSIAH one of its Best Books of 2026 So Far, which was pretty cool. And Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, calling it “a fascinating account of the deep intertwining of religion and politics.” Air Mail was kind, too, praising the book as “equal parts enlightening and disturbing, which translates into journalism at its best.” On the conservative end of the spectrum, the Washington Examiner called it “vivid and refreshingly original.”
And yes, I did get my first negative—or perhaps “lukewarm” is the right word—review, from Benjamin Young in Compact Magazine. You can read it for yourself (link in comments), but it can’t be so negative if he describes the book as “heavily researched and highly readable…a trailblazing narrative of how Christianity made its way to the shores of Korea.”
The book has done nicely online. It was listed as Amazon’s #1 New Release for Communism & Socialism and #1 New Release for Asian Politics, and Bruce Cumings’ review from a few weeks back should (finally) be running in Sunday’s print edition of the New York Times.
That said, I could always use an extra push! The Amazon page still only has one lonely review, so if you’re loving the book—or pretty sure you’re going to love it—I wouldn’t mind a glowing endorsement. (Goodreads too!)
Next up: A few months’ rest before I hit the Midwest and the West Coast. More to come.