King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo--too long forgotten--onto the conscience of the West. more

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Recent Reviews

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Oct-12-2009; Great Book On Colonialisn. A Must Read!; Almost all of us have forgotten that what we are taught in school is very censored and sterilized. The heroes are chosen not for what they did but for what our leaders would like us to see and think. This goes on everywhere whether you...; read full review | report as inappropriate

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Sep-12-2009; history; This is not a book for the faint-hearted. It is a brutal history of the subjugation of Africans particularly focusing on their treatment by the Belgians. It is extremely well written and an excellent reference source for anyone...; read full review | report as inappropriate

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Jul-24-2009; And the meek shall inherit the Earth; Just the fact that we live in a place where we can think that we are more than farm animals (think usefulness) seems to be a luxury of circumstances, we have this ILLUSION of self-determination. What' s ironic , as the author uses other...; read full review | report as inappropriate

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Jul-24-2009; Lead by example; Europeans by some chance of fate had a technological advantage over the rest of the world and therefore had a chance to use this advantage to define the future of mankind in a positive way, what they did instead was what has amounted to...; read full review | report as inappropriate

Selected Reviews

5/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Oct-12-2009; Great Book On Colonialisn. A Must Read!; Almost all of us have forgotten that what we are taught in school is very censored and sterilized. The heroes are chosen not for what they did but for what our leaders would like us to see and think. This goes on everywhere whether you...; read full review | report as inappropriate

3/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Sep-17-2005; less then perfect; The importance of this book is in illuminating a less known saga from the colonial past of Belgium and of Europeans in Africa in general. I learned some new things about these unfortunate events. However; this document is less then...; read full review | report as inappropriate

1/5: From: Amazon; Posted: Jul-17-2009; Liberal bias ruined this for me; When I began reading this, I detected a leftist bias and lack of scholarship. I checked the authors bio when I got fed up with his slant and assumptions and I wasn't surprised to see that he is a journalism professor at Cal-Berkley. Pass...; read full review | report as inappropriate