How is this different from REST API? Serious question. Why get downvoted?
With REST APIs (first few pages of the book), services talk directly with each other, with event sourcing (the rest of the book) services talk with an event store (Kafka in the book) as the intermediary.
Your question makes as much sense as: why is <new database X> any different from SQL?
OK. So I didn't get what Kafka is.