Highly original, deeply researched and cogently observed ... Manages to be truly informative, wholly serious and sometimes humorous, all at the same time ... I often lament the relative absence of investigative journalism on North Korea, which leaves Americans mostly in the dark when a crisis erupts there, as it often does. Cheng’s book, nearly 15 years in the making, goes a long way toward filling that gap ... This is a brilliant history of North Korea.
Dense yet accessible in presentation ... Readers interested in Christian missionary history and North Korea, especially those wanting to peer beyond the headlines featuring Kim Jong Un, will enjoy Cheng’s carefully constructed, in-depth chronicle of an essential if hidden aspect of this closed-off nation.
An eye-opening view of North Korea’s apocalyptic, messianic, weird—and Christian-based—cult of personality ... Fascinating insight into the birth of the moral equivalent of a totalitarian theocracy.
