[This Week's Books] The Black Unicorn and More

The Tumultuous US-China Hegemony War and the Age of Great Division

Globalization is not over—it is splitting apart. Neil Shearing interprets the US-China hegemony struggle as much more than a simple trade dispute; he sees it as a process in which technology, finance, energy, key minerals, and supply chains are reorganizing into two separate systems. In the past, businesses crossed borders in search of the cheapest and fastest route, but now, that path is lined with signposts for security, sanctions, alliances, and camps. The global economy, which used to chase efficiency, is now being rewoven in the language of strategy.

What stands out is not the familiar idea of “deglobalization,” but rather the diagnosis of a “division.” Companies must now choose not just where to produce most cheaply but which side of the divide they will stand on; meanwhile, nations are prioritizing strategy over markets. The warning is clear: the global economy over the next ten years cannot be understood through just exchange rates or growth figures. (Written by Neil Shearing | Translated by Kyungeun Lim | 21st Century Books)

The Black Unicorn

The success stories of unicorn companies are often remembered for the money invested and the sale price achieved. Andy Dunn, however, brings to light how a person can collapse behind those dazzling numbers. The drive of the founder who built Bonobos was intertwined with type 1 bipolar disorder, and as the company grew, his life increasingly slipped out of his control.

The startup world often glorifies obsessive immersion and bold decisions as virtues. This memoir is uncomfortable precisely because it reveals how easily that language of virtue has covered up human suffering. Dunn speaks not with cynicism aimed at shattering the myth of entrepreneurship, but with the voice of someone who has experienced it up close. A company can grow, but that growth does not save its founder. The confession of someone who climbed to the very top instead makes us ask how to endure for longer. (Written by Andy Dunn | Translated by Youngjoon Park | Sangsang Square)

The Essentials of Economics for Surviving on the Planet of Money

Economics may appear to be a distant discipline, but in reality, it is at work every day in your grocery basket, on delivery apps, in your rent and retirement planning, and weekend leisure. Based on stories from NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast, this book unpacks economic principles through scenes of work and careers, family, saving and investing, and leisure.

Using everyday examples instead of stiff formulas and graphs lowers the entry barrier for beginners. Seemingly trivial topics—pickle prices, working from home, childcare costs, index funds, and credit card points—eventually tie back to issues of markets, institutions, incentives, and choices. The book’s lightweight approach sets it apart from more deeply analytical works, but that very lightness is its strength. It recasts economics not as expert jargon, but as a lens for interpreting ordinary life. (Written by Alex Mayyasi & Alex Goldmark | Translated by Nuri Park & Sanghyun Park | Think Power)

Living Through Beatings

Violence does not end in a single incident. Hyungseo Park propels the narrative of modern and contemporary Korean history—from liberation to the present—using the structure of a frame novel and the picaresque form, unfolding a bizarre procession of people who are beaten, beat others, endure, and seek revenge. What begins as the suffering of an individual soon spreads like a habit of the times, and violence becomes not just an event, but something that envelops the characters like air. Although the narrative deals with horrific cycles, the sentences do not simply descend into heaviness, instead moving between humor, allegory, and a sardonic seriousness.

This 648-page novel is not a light read, but Park’s distinctive narrative density narrows vast spans of time into the ordeal of a single human, only to then expand it into a diagnosis of Korean society’s wounds. The bluntness of the title is no exaggeration. In this novel, saying “I’ve lived through beatings” is not just a personal confession—it embodies the lived reality of an era that has yet to end. (Written by Hyungseo Park | Munhakdongne Publishing Group)

Gentle Hell

When the words “gentle” and “hell” are placed side by side, life becomes most precisely uncomfortable. Romanian-born cultural anthropologist Irina Grigore records her childhood under socialism, the transition to capitalism, and her life as an immigrant scholar in Japan—in Japanese, a language that is not her native tongue. The history of three generations of family, the shadow of Chernobyl, the female body, and the sensations of migration intermingle, turning personal memory into the fieldwork of anthropology. In this book, one’s homeland is less a place to return to and more a lingering sensitivity within the body, something that is continually translated.

The book’s strength lies less in systemic critique than in its pinpoint accuracy of sensation. Small moments—the bitterness of mountain herbs, frogs in dreams, an immunity to foreign language—connect socialism and capitalism, homeland and foreign lands, body and history. Though it is a personal account, it is not closed off by self-pity. It demonstrates how many remnants of different eras are contained within a single person’s body as they move through the world. (Written by Irina Grigore | Translated by Younghyun Kim | Dada Books)

The Ontology of Language

Where is language? Hideki Noma pursues this seemingly simple question all the way to page 640. Instead of approaching language solely as a structure, a system of rules, or symbols, he reconsiders it in the real “language field” where someone speaks, listens, writes, and reads. Speech is not just in the mind, and writing is not limited to paper. Language becomes an event only when enacted between people, and through that event, it gains existence.

The length and density are formidable. Noma continually questions the fundamental premises of linguistics, from spoken and written language to meaning, sentences, subjects and predicates, ellipsis, truth and falsity, and tense. As each assumption about language is shaken, the reader is made to see language not as a tool, but as the way in which a world unfolds. The author of “The Birth of Hangul” returns to the most fundamental grounds of linguistics in this treatise. Difficult, yes, but that difficulty is—the cost required to see the most familiar thing, language, with fresh eyes. (Written by Hideki Noma | Translated by Kyungwon Kim | Yeonrip Books)

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.