Play Book Tag discussion

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild is a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa. At the turn of the 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 cultivate his reputation as a great humanitarian.

King Leopold's Ghost is a work of history that reads like a novel. In a tale far richer than a novelist could invent, it is the horrifying account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions.

It is also the moving portrait of those who defied Leopold: African rebel leaders who fought against hopeless odds and a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and 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.

I gave the book four stars because at certain places the details in the narrative became bogged down and tedious. Because of the atrocities, inhumanity, and cruelty it was not an easy book to read.

This sounds like one I would like! Great review, I am adding it

I read this last year and thought it was really well done. Such an interesting and atrocious part of history.

Great review, Diane. I was greatly moved when I read this book a number of years ago and went on a Congo kick reading everything I could about the area.

I also thought this one was really good.