King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial AfricaThe 25th Anniversary Edition, with a foreword by Barbara Kingsolver "An enthralling story . . . A work of history that reads like a novel." — Christian Science Monitor “As Hochschild’s brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * A New York Times Notable Book In the late nineteenth century, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium carried out a brutal plundering of the territory surrounding the Congo River. Ultimately slashing the area’s population by ten million, he still managed to shrewdly cultivate his reputation as a great humanitarian. A tale far richer than any novelist could invent, King Leopold’s Ghost is the horrifying account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who defied Leopold: African rebel leaders who fought against hopeless odds and a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure but unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust and participants in the twentieth century’s first great human rights movement. |
From inside the book
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... interest scoops of the century. Because Stanley was the only source of information about the search (his two white companions died during the expedition, and no one ever bothered to interview the surviving porters), the legend remained ...
... interest was a tall, august thirty-seven-year-old man with a spade-shaped beard, living in the rambling château of Laeken on a low hill on the outskirts of Brussels. Seven years earlier, on the death of his father, Leopold II had ...
... interest in his studies, with the notable exception of geography. From the age of ten on, he was given military training; by fifteen, he held the rank of lieutenant in the Belgian Army, at sixteen captain, at eighteen major, at nineteen ...
... interest whatever in art, music, or literature, Leopold was nonetheless a dedicated scholar when it came to one subject, profits. During the month he spent in Seville, he wrote home to a friend, “I am very busy here going through the ...
Other editions - View all
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa Adam Hochschild No preview available - 2019 |
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Adam Hochschild No preview available - 1999 |