Gordon Chang really can pick 'em. In 2001, as the world awakened to China's incandescent rise, he made a stir with "The Coming Collapse of China." Earlier this year he published "Nuclear Showdown," which Pyongyang has helped popularize with missile and nuclear-weapons tests. You can't buy this kind of publicity.
Chang knows how to turn a phrase: Chapter titles include "Ku Klux Korea," "The Pygmalion of Pyongyang," "Tokyo: Target for Termination," and "Last Exit Before the Dark Ages."
Few other countries lend themselves to comments like "will [Kim Jong Il] change the course of human events with an act of unimaginable devastation?" or "all humanity is at risk," or "North Korean insults us. Its very existence is an affront to our sense of decency, perhaps even to the idea of human progress." Dear Leader Kim Jong Il is a "diminutive . . . unbalanced autocrat" who "lacks empathy."