A very disturbing book that puts light on colonialism. Hochschild writers very well; at no point is the book boring nor does it read like a list. Hochschild is also even handed. He doesn't whitewash - good guys have flaws, and he mentions them. Hochschild does make the reader think about how the Wes...
‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ – Kurtz A very readable summary of one of the first real international human rights campaigns, a campaign focussed on that vast slab of central Africa once owned, not by Belgium, but personally by the Belgian King. The Congo Free State was a handy microcosm of coloniali...
If you ask an educated American to name the worst despots and atrocities of the twentieth century, you'll immediately hear such names as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Very few would name Leopold II, King of the Belgians and absolute master of the Belgian Congo. I wouldn't have before reading this...
This book documents the human rights abuses in colonial Congo at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. It's a story that almost everyone has forgotten, even though it was the basis for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. People assume that Heart of Darkness is supposed to be a wi...
Scrolling through my past reads, almost all of them fiction, it struck me how much my reading could benefit from more variety. The first non-fiction book I bought, as far back as I can remember, had to do with futurism, and I never did finish it. Scandalous! What non-fiction I've dabbled in since th...
A very troubling look at the Belgian involvement in the Congo -- a chapter in the European 'Scramble for Africa' -- that I had not known much about. Leopold, in particular, comes out looking very bad. The book (which I listened to as an audio) is still a bit too long and spends too much time on nar...
Dedication: For David Hunter*gasp* what, him from Crossroads!?IntroductionPrologueMapOpening: On January 28 1841, a quarter-century after Turkey's failed expedition, the man who would spectacularly accomplish what Turkey tried to do was born in the small Welsh market town of Denbigh.
Every once in a while, I come across a writer that will tell me a story exactly as I wish it to be told to me; even if I didn't yet know how at the time. This is one of those instances.It's quite well known now, or at least I hope it is, that King Leopold II of the Belgians orchestrated a system of ...
Gripping. I particularly appreciated the constant effort Hochschild makes to track down Congolese voices, such as have survived, rather that keeping them as silent victims in a European narrative, which is usually what annoys me in books about the Western encounter with the rest of the world.
Important: Our sites use cookies.
We use the information stored using cookies and similar technologies for advertising and statistics purposes.
Stored data allow us to tailor the websites to individual user's interests.
Cookies may be also used by third parties cooperating with BookLikes, like advertisers, research companies and providers of multimedia applications.
You can choose how cookies are handled by your device via your browser settings.
If you choose not to receive cookies at any time, BookLikes will not function properly and certain services will not be provided.
For more information, please go to our Privacy Policy.
Log in with Facebook 
