This textbook, aimed at advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in political science, international relations, and Asian studies, offers a comprehensive overview of East Asian international relations. Wan combines evolutionary and constructivist approaches, while also engaging with realism and liberal institutionalism. He traces a ‘Confucian long peace’ from 1644 to 1839 among China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, which unravelled with Western and Japanese imperialism and China's decline, culminating in Japan’s wars throughout the Pacific during 1937–45. The post-1945 era brought decolonisation, US dominance, Cold War alliances, and conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Wan identifies five ‘waves’ of rapid growth in the region, highlighting China’s role in the fourth as a global manufacturing hub. The 1997–98 regional financial crisis prompted East Asian central banks to amass dollar reserves. Investment of these reserves in US Treasury bonds is seen by Wan as contributing to the 2008 Great Recession. Post-Cold War East-Asian regionalism, once focused on economic integration is giving way to renewed geopolitical rivalry, particularly between the US and China. This rivalry is framed in terms of regime type and shifting power balances. Although he writes before the second Trump administration, Wan notes that liberalism and the liberal international order are increasingly under pressure by a new Cold War, as well as by the anti-globalist right within Western democracies. Wan balances ‘thin’, stylised theories, typical of IR with the detailed historically oriented ‘thick description’ of Asian studies – a notable achievement. He may be exaggerating the role of the evolutionary framework, and Marxist approaches are missing despite his strong focus on political economy. Nevertheless, East Asian International Relations may very well be the best available introduction to its subject.