THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2026 43 The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia’s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Columbia Global Reports, 2025, $18.00/paperback, e-book available, 104 pages. In April 2020, netizens in Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Taipei joined forces to push back against supporters of mainland China. This online resistance movement became known as the Milk Tea Alliance—because most people in these countries use dairy products in their iconic tea drinks, whereas those in Beijing do not. The author explores how alliance members—particularly, young activists Agnes Chow of Hong Kong and Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal of Thailand as well as an older Burmese activist, Ye Myint Win—have united to oppose the Chinese Communist Party. Through exchange tactics and pop culture, they have displayed solidarity and given young people hope for a better future. Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a professor of history at the University of California–Irvine and the editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. He is also the Asia editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and an associate fellow of the Asia Society. The Struggle for the Market: Life and Hustle in Cuba’s New Economy Ståle Wig, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025, $64.95/hardcover, e-book available, 224 pages. Two years after Raúl Castro succeeded his brother as president of Cuba, he announced the country would begin reforming its economy. In a 2010 speech, he pointed to “the positive experience of capitalists” and made self-employment legal in the notoriously socialist country. In The Struggle for the Market, anthropologist Ståle Wig looks at the market reforms that unfolded after that speech, telling the story of the Cubans who grappled with building a private market and the extent to which the government should stay involved in its development. Wig interviewed cuentapropistas—a newly invented term for now-legal private entrepreneurs who arose in the new economy— giving this book both an academic layer and personal angle. Ståle Wig is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo and author of Havana Taxi. Other Recent Books of Interest Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult Jonathan Cheng, Knopf, 2026, $36.00/hardcover, e-book available, 768 pages. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia Sam Dalrymple, W.W. Norton, 2026, $21.00/ hardcover, e-book available, 534 pages. Diplomatic Notes: Canada’s Foreign Service Community in Its Own Words Pamela Isfeld and Lillian Thomsen, eds., Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, 2026, hardcover available for purchase, e-book free on PAFSO website, 391 pages. Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID Nicholas Enrich, S&S/Summit Books, 2026, $19.00/ paperback, e-book available, 240 pages. The Long War on Iran: New Events, Old Questions Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, OR Books, 2026, $17.00/ paperback, e-book available, 249 pages. A Daring Enterprise: A US-Egyptian Partnership and a Case for Soft Power James Harmon, Cornelius Queen, and Mark Warren, American University in Cairo Press, 2026, $35.00/ hardcover, e-book available, 278 pages. Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy Julia Ioffe, Ecco, 2025, $22.00/paperback, e-book available, 512 pages. As the Pentagon Burned: Leadership and Human Excellence in the Face of the 9/11 Attack Matthew S. Klimov, Palmetto Publishing, 2026, $21.99/paperback, e-book available, 190 pages. The Closing of the Russian Mind: How Putin’s Ideology Took the Nation Hostage Andrei Kolesnikov, Polity, 2026, $29.95/hardcover, e-book available, 256 pages. Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company Patrick McGee, Scribner, 2025, $21.00/paperback, e-book available, 480 pages. The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos, the World’s First Super Terrorist Joby Warrick, Scribner, 2026, $30.00/hardcover, e-book available, 384 pages.
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