Rating: 
Summary: A Well Written, But Ultimately Weak Thesis
Review: I was a big fan of Hochschilds early book Stalin's Unquiet Ghosts. It is in my opinion won of the best books written on Russian History. So, I was excited to see he wrote a book on the Scramble for Africa and the actions of Belgium in the Congo. I have often heard people in my history classes, who have come from black studies departments, compare Leopold II to Hitler and Stalin. I was always interested to know if that was an accurate statement. Hochschild supports that arguement and in the introduction and the back of the book mentions the terrible atrocities committed by the Belgiums in the Congo. While, the book was well written, I don't think Hochschild fully and adequately backed his statements and hypothesis. Too me, the book failed to prove Leopold II is in the same league as a Hitler or Stalin. Could he be? Was he? I don't know or still know even after reading the book. I found this book more informative about Henry Stanely than about atrocities committed by Leopold. The thesis still might be true, but the book failed to prove it.
Rating: 
Summary: Haunting
Review: I just finished a wonderful book called "Empires Of The Monsoon" by Richard Hall, which dealt with an earlier period of colonialism and covered a broader canvas. It was so interesting that I took this book down from my bookshelves and decided to read it right after the Hall book. Hochschild has a rather radical pedigree (Mother Jones magazine) so I was concerned about getting an unsubtle diatribe but for the most part the author manages to restrain himself. He very cleverly eases you into this horror story with some beautifully written early chapters which give wonderful character studies of King Leopold and Henry Morton Stanley, among others. Only then do you get hammered with the awful things that the Belgians did to the Congolese. Mr. Hochschild can't resist a few potshots at the free traders and unbridled capitalists but for the most part he wisely sticks to personalities. Sections of this book are pretty gruesome. Be forewarned that there are some photographs that may leave you kind of queasy. Leopold's henchmen were quite enthusiastic about their work and you start to get emotionally numbed by all the decapitations and severed hands (and other lopped off body parts) but Mr. Hochschild throws in the occasional change of pace by giving you a chapter on a specific personality. (Did I forget to mention Joseph Conrad, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain? They are here also, along with many other interesting people I had never heard of before.) One of the things that bothered me after finishing this book was that I never was taught anything in school about what happened in the Congo. Possibly 10 million natives died under this brutal regime. It kind of makes me think that if you want a true education you are on your own...
Rating:
Summary: Colonialism--a most brutal system
Review: This is an excellent book to describe the evils of colonialism.It commences by describing the greed of King Leopold in subjugating the Congo. The native people suffered under the most unimaginable cruelties in order to satisfy the demand for the products--ivory and rubber--that the colonizers demanded. About 50% of the population were destroyed by these policies. A few heroes exposed the atrocities to the world and gained a strong following. With the vast amounts of money available however, many prominent people were co-opted to support the King in a vast PR campaign. What is most shocking is that after the Belgian government was able to displace the King and take over the colony, the same cruel policies continued. Cruel policies that exist in all the colonial territories--British, French, German, Portugese, etc. Unfortuately--although the colonies have obtained their freedom--the same policies probably still exist because the third world lives in quasi colonialism under the new world order of "free trade" of WTO, NAFTA, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: King Leopold's Ghost
Review: This is a question rather than a review. When I heard this book reviewed on NPR's Morning Report, most of the comments were about Rev. William Sheppard, a Presbyterian missionary to the Congo in the late 19th century. Were these comments about this book? I saw no other books listed in the last few months on any of the NPR programs that are about this subject. I want to order the book if it deals with William Sheppard's involvement in the Congo.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and thought-provoking!
Review: I have read 3 books on the subject of Leopold and the Congo: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Neal Ascherson's The King Incorporated; A. Hochshild's King Leopold's Ghost. All 3 are well worth reading. I find Hochschild's to be the easiest one to read and the most entertaining and thought-provoking; also the latest; and well documented. Ascherson's goes into more detail and is very thorough and equally well documented, but probably harder work. I didn't particularly enjoy Heart of Darkness; granted it's the classical work on the subject, but I didn't find it particularly enjoyable. All 3 works refer to how King Leopold of Belgium managed to carve out for himself a personal, yes, personal colony in the 1880's against all odds in the heart of black Africa, which had made him a colossal fortune by the time that, bowing to international pressure,he handed it over to the Belgian Government shortly before he died in 1909, after having destroyed the majority of the colony's records. The King is shown to be a man of exceptional intelligence and cunning, hypocritical and deceitful and totally deprived of morality. These works suggest that the enormous profits he got out of the Congo were based on his ruthlessly forcing the natives to work for him in shipping to the international markets huge quantities of ivory and later of rubber. His brutal tactics resulted in the population literally being halved in the Congo during the 24 years that he was in charge. I would recommend that you begin with Hochschild and then go to Ascherson for more detail and a somewhat different perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: This is a marvelous book, addressing a little-known subject (really, what do you know about the turn-of-the-century Congo?). I recommend it to all students of the European expansion, and to all Americans. This is a well-written book that I recommend without reservation. If I were editor, however, I would have made two changes: (1) less discussion (especially in the middle of the book)on the activities in England of the anti-Leopold groups (despite the undoubted nobility of their actions); and (2) MORE MAPS! (an unmet requirement for almost all modern historical books). I am ecouraged to re-read "Heart of Darkness." The saddest passages in the book are in the epilogue (unlabeled as such, however): the Congo experiences (as much as 10 million dead, 50% mortality, which exceeded Europe's Black Death as a demographic catastrophe) was not unusual for sub-Sahara African experience for the time. Just something to think about.
Rating:
Summary: WOW !
Review: Every time I get tired of looking at the local line up of psycho novels and analysis of the worlds current state of disrepair, I find a book like this, opening doors and letting the light in on all too short memories. What a world. What heroes ! What shame ! Its enough to make you turn off the tv and radio. It makes you weep for the congo and ourselves. It should be required reading.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing treatment of an epic theme
Review: Leopold II's acquisition and ruthless exploitation of the Congo as a personal fief was an undertaking that was simultaneously epic and squalid. Untold hundreds of thousands of Africans - perhaps even millions, the statistics are uncertain - died under conditions of the most appalling suffering to satisfy this egomaniac's greed. Worse still, the whole callous process, which descended at times into orgiastic sadism, was aided and abetted by a range of administrators, business interests and even missionaries. Leopold dominates the narrative, a malign, hypocritical and wealth-obsessed spider at the centre of a vast web of his own making, busy until the last in creating schemes of breath-taking ambition and of true, unadulterated evil, never visiting the lands he made a hell, never glimpsing the wretches whose lives he ruined. Villains outnumber the heroes in the story by a substantial margin, and the efforts of the magnificent trio of E.D. Morel, Roger Casement and the shipping magnate John Holt to expose the scandal and end the abuses were rewarded with only qualified success. This book covers the basic facts of the story, often in a somewhat sketchy manner, and one longs repeatedly for more detail and for imposition of a firmer chronological sequence on the events described. The writing lacks a real sense and feel for Africa, its landscapes and its peoples, and indeed Thomas Packenham's treatment of the same topic in his "The Scramble for Africa", though more summary, is considerably more convincing and rewarding. An interesting footnote is that when Irish forces went to the Congo in 1960 as part of the UN response to the secession of Katanga, they did so as "The Casement Brigade" and the airbase near Dublin they flew out from has been known thereafter as the "Casement Airfield". One feels that the old champion of Congolese rights and of Irish independence would have approved fully.
Rating:
Summary: TELL THE UGLY STORY OF THE CONGO
Review: If you want to know why Africans dislike the Western world read this book,it show how one man can distroy a country and why the Congo is in the condition it is in now.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written and interesting, but oh so biased.
Review: This is a really good book, make no mistake about it. People should learn about dark periods in our history. Europeans really did screw over the Africans. Still, the author goes a little too far in demonizing the villian, King Leopold. He also makes a more than a few suppositions --"it's safe to assume Mr. X passed by Mr. Y," or "the King might have been thinking this"-- that really have no place in a history book. I would have preferred more fact, more political context. The history here can stand on its own merits and still show this time for what it was, horrible exploitation.
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