Black Coffee discussion

A little different this time :o)

Just post your general thoughts or review of this book.

I read King Leopold's Ghost when it was first published. It was one of my best reads of that year. And to this day I recommend this book. While reading non-fiction I usually read a chapter a day as it helps to get through reading this type of genre but with this book I read it straight through with my highlighter and researching topics as I went along. As someone who grew up in the changing times of the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement in the US and the growing independence of the Caribbean and African nations - providing this full history of the Congo helped to understand the challenges of the newer nations to fully realize their potentials with such horrific experiences in their recent past. I enjoyed how the book looked at the Congo before Europeans claimed this territory and the whys of the European exploration. A very well-reseached well-written book that stays with you long after the last page was read.

This book really took a lot of perseverance to get through. It touched on a subject, to be honest, I've never read about before and that's one of the reasons I was so eager to read it. However, I can not believe that King Leopold II, one man, had this much power and authority to almost destroy a section of Africa (the Congo) and it's people. There had to be more players that had bigger roles than the book states. There had to be other people interested in that part of Africa besides Leopold. It's almost like saying Hilter carried out the Holocaust by himself.

And to think, Leopold did not die by his own hand or by that of an assassin just blows my mind. Which leads me back to thinking, were other people appalled in public because this was the "right" thing to do....but at the end of the day..."does it really matter because they're black salvages".

The book opened up my eyes to King Leopold and his affect on the Congo. But it left me wanting so much more. I'd like to have learned more about the Congolese and their true reactions to these men who were causing hell in their lives.

This book was hard to read because of the decriptions of what happens to the African people, but it is definitely a subject that more people should know about.