King Leopold's Ghost
A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
- 416 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The 25th Anniversary Edition, with a foreword by Barbara Kingsolver
"An enthralling story . . . A work of history that reads like a novel." — Christian Science Monitor
“As Hochschild’s brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist * A New York Times Notable Book
In the late nineteenth 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 shrewdly cultivate his reputation as a great humanitarian. A tale far richer than any novelist could invent, King Leopold’s Ghost is the horrifying account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who defied Leopold: African rebel leaders who fought against hopeless odds and a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young 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.
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Information
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Contents
- Copyright
- Foreword
- Dedication
- Map
- Introduction
- “The Traders Are Kidnapping Our People”
- Walking Into Fire
- “I Shall Not Give Up the Chase”
- The Fox Crosses the Stream
- The Magnificent Cake
- “The Treaties Must Grant Us Everything”
- From Florida to Berlin
- Under the Yacht Club Flag
- The First Heretic
- Where There Aren’t No Ten Commandments
- Photos
- Meeting Mr. Kurtz
- The Wood That Weeps
- A Secret Society of Murderers
- A King at Bay
- David and Goliath
- Breaking into the Thieves’ Kitchen
- To Flood His Deeds with Day
- A Reckoning
- “Journalists Won’t Give You Receipts”
- No Man Is a Stranger
- Victory?
- The Great Forgetting
- A Personal Afterword
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- Discussion Questions
- Also By Adam Hochschild
- About the Author
- Connect on Social Media
- Footnotes