J.M. Hushour's Reviews > Congo: The Epic History of a People

Van Reybrouck is the archetypal historian-voyager whose jargon-less, civil, practical approach to his subject makes one want to go grab a beer with him somewhere. He also shines because much of his writing and research centers around sitting around grabbing beers and time from random Congolese figures, some of note in recent Congolese history, others just random joes and janes he meets about the country.
This is history as it should be written: as an encounter. The Congo is never distant, never bridled and narrowed behind academic blinkers. This is truly and sometimes literally the shit, here people. VR gets down and grungy, visiting shady war criminals, aging Congolese music celebrities, and, in the denoument, traveling to Guangzhou in China where the true nature of the globalized world is revealed to him. Europe and the West, frankly, he admits at the end, have lost their luster, are boring, self-righteous, and wrongfully indignant at the implication. What he presents here is a new, living, breathing, sweating, and swearing world. A third world country that's been teetering on the brink of complete social and economic collapse that's somehow managed to survive. That's what this is at its base: a history of the survival of a country and its people vs all kinds of adversities. One of the best and liveliest history books I've ever read and definitely the best work of African history I've come across.