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Original Title:	King Leopold's Ghost ASIN B004KZOWEG
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Leopold II of Belgium
Setting:	Congo, Democratic Republic of the (Congo, the Democratic Republic of the) Congo Free State
Literary Awards:	Mark Lynton History Prize (1999), California Book Award for Nonfiction (Gold) (1998), Lionel Gelber Prize (1999), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1998), Duff Cooper Prize (1999)

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschild

Kindle Edition | Pages: 442 pages

Rating: 4.16 | 38197 Users | 2540 Reviews

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Title	:	King Leopold's Ghost
Author	:	Adam Hochschild
Book Format	:	Kindle Edition
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 442 pages
Published	:	September 3rd 1999 by Mariner Books (first published September 21st 1998)
Categories	:	History. Nonfiction. Cultural. Africa. Biography. Politics

Chronicle During Books King Leopold's Ghost

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

Rating Based On Books King Leopold's Ghost

Ratings: 4.16 From 38197 Users | 2540 Reviews

Judge Based On Books King Leopold's Ghost

The best non-fiction book I've ever read. The hyphenated title on the book is a story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa and that sums it up very well. Such horrific treatment including brutal maiming and killing of workers, including children, who refused to work for King Leopold's rubber plantations is a story untold for centuries and deserves this fine treatment by Adam Hochschild. King Leopold of Belgium was an unrepentant monster.

Review to follow........

Exterminate all the brutes! KurtzA 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 colonialism in its most extreme and polarised form: political control subsumed into corporate control, natural resources removed wholesale, local peoples dispossessed of their lands, their freedom, their lives. To

After almost 4 years I have finally finished this. Excellent book, written in an engaging way. My issue with it is that the subject matter is horrific. I could only do small doses. But it was worth it. Eye opening doesn't begin to cover it and it has very specific lessons about governing and government that are firmly in place to day (analogous). Leopold was a monster in a world full of monsters. The last chapter "The Great Forgetting" was particularly poignant. Very important book. It couldn't



This book took me several months to read because it was so disturbing. After reading a chapter and having nightmares, I'd put it away for something else, and then return to it once I'd finished with the other book.The atrocities committed in the Belgian Congo were nothing short of diabolical. And yet, shockingly, one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century remains relatively unheard of.I am a big fan of Adam Hochschild; he makes you feel like you're reading a novel rather than a

Horrifying story, rivetingly told. Regrettably, much of my reading of history has been centered primarily on the history of Europe and of the U.S. Hochschild's account of Belgium's exploitation of the Congo left me appalled. Despite the accounts of some truly savage atrocities, I ended up reading it in a couple of marathon sittings. A disturbing book, but one so well-written, I highly recommend it.