Rating: 
Summary: Engrossing
Review: To use the old cliche: when I read this book I could barely put it down. At times I was angry and other times bewillered about how the genocide of a people could take place and then be systemically denied for so many years. Throughout my reading about Africa, I never knew about the Belgium atrocities under Leopold's rule until I read this book. It seems like this part of history has been kept well hidden. Perhaps because it personifies the history of European rule and exploitation of Africa for over four hundred years.Hoschcild's narrative is both passionate, engrossing, and vivid. He doesn't seek to make apologies for Leopold's atrocities. He doesn't understate the killing of over 5 million Congolese Africans for the profit and wealth of a King and his estate. At the same time, he reveals the couregous work that was done by activists like the American born African Reverend William H. Sheppard whose writing documenting the brutality of the Congo state made him the object of a lawsuit and trail because he stood up against the colonial empire. "King Leopold's Ghost" will be informative to both those knowledgable of European domination of Africa, and to those who are just beginning to do the research. This book will be a classic in African history.
Rating: 
Summary: A College Book!
Review: Great book, except with lots of details. I had to read this for college, so we got into most of the details, but it's a good book for insight into world history and slavery. Read this if you want to learn history in a casual and non-boring way!
Rating: 
Summary: disturbing book I was so shocked I didn't finish the book
Review: The book I happen to pick up by chance at a libray,and even through the first pages it shocked me how humanity can go so low to exploit other people. I am glad the author took the chance to get a book like this published. These types of stories are nothing new for European people. The very time they set foot in the Kongo they knew what they wanted and took advantage of a people that did not have that well of a well devleoped millitary or wepaons. The people of the Congo got called primitive ape like creatures at the expense of a more industrialized Europeans nations. The Romans did the same to the celts,Germanics,and Iberians. I guess it is hard for the Europeans since they were the last people to devleop a civilzation they had to out do the previous Grecoromans civilzation. The African people of the Congo did have kingdoms,or to some cheifdoms. The One tribe called the Bakuba as pointed out by the author had similar desighns in their raffina cloth to the ancient Egyptains. The Luba for some reason also produced stools and head rests similar to the ones found in TutankhAmon's tomb. The natives thought when the portugeese touched down they were their dead ancestors.
King Leopold according to this book seems to be a insecure person,who uses his power and domination for a self esteem boost. The Congo as painted by many people are nothing but a bunch of Bantus wearing lion cloth,but this book also talks about the missionaries that seem to be deicated to one thing and that is rape and pillage. The should be read by everyone that has morals and consideration for humanity. I was real shocked however that people were actually taking babies and killing them. The people seemed to not even care. Also something crucial this points out is the Jewish invovlment in all this. He makes no haste to also indicate the Rothchids had a big role in the colonization of Africa. This book may be hard to read,but it really teaches you about corruption and greed.
Rating:
Summary: Reflections on Horror
Review: Hochschild does an amazing job of reconciling conflicting reports of the Belgian Congo's past. His straight-forward presentation of the horrors inflicted on an entire population while the world was deceived by King Leopold's 'humanitarian actions' are humanized with descriptions from missionaries and explorers who witnessed the atrocities first-hand. This description of world-wide deception, unmeasurable personal greed, and the contagious lethality of power makes one look at current political struggles with more than one question as to what is happening behind the scenes.
Rating:
Summary: A powerful look at colonial brutality
Review: The story of Leopold's quest for a colony, any colony, and of the consequences of being a native of his own personal feifdom is gripping and terrible. Hochschild gives a very balanced, objective voice to this history many people would prefer to forget. In fact, his voice is so balanced, and so objective, that as a reader I had to stop from time to time as the horror of what I'd just read sank in. The story tells itself and leaves the reader to create his own outrage and disgust in response. Yet for all the outrage and disgust the account generates, it equally enlightens readers to why things are the way they are now in the Congo. The ghost of Leopold's orders and actions has reverberated down through history and will continue to affect life in the Congo for many years to come. Seeing the beginning of the problem gives hope that there can be an end, too. This is a valuable story on several levels. First, it should be read because it is true, and truths need to be brought to light. Second, the history is important to understand the present. Last, King Leopold's Ghost serves as an object lesson for us to examine our own modern world, to look for and call out the maniacal self interest and callous disregard for others that made the story possible.
Rating:
Summary: "Horrific Tale of Murder and Greed"
Review: King Leopold's Ghost is such a horrific and gripping account of the terror that took place in the Belgium Congo during the King's 23 year reign in the early 1900's. This book took me by complete surprise as I was looking for an historical account of this time period for a research project. I had never studied or even read about the horror that took place a century ago in the Congo and was amazed at the exploitation and murder of the population that went on so freely and completely unchecked. Anyone interested in the history of the Congo or in Africa would find this book both intelligently and frankly written. The detailed accounts of terror and murder are shocking but they will keep you reading until the end. I am currently searching for more "true" material of this time to read! This book has inspired me to learn more.
Rating:
Summary: King Leopold's Ghost
Review: I read this historical account after reading Barbara Kingsolver's POISONWOOD BIBLE. KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST is an incredibly interesting and readable history of the Congo region and about the European "heroes" that left their marks there. Hochschild reveals the truth about the development of the Congo and Belgium's King Leopold II. Once I started reading, I didn't want to put it down. Really well written.
Rating:
Summary: an eye opener
Review: I couldn't put this book down. It is just about the best-written work of non-fiction that I have ever read. Tired of reading about the atrocities of colonialism? Feel like you've read it all before? Brace yourself. You will be shocked by the holocaust that took place in the Congo. You will be shocked that such evil could have happened so recently - barely a century ago - and already have been largely forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: Good collation of facts...
Review: In this well researched and documented revelation, the author did not spare anybody in the pursuit of laying bare the vulgarity of colonial conquest. The book is, of course, mainly about Leopold ll's avarice and cruel exploitation of a big piece of Africa---a man indifferent to art, music or literature who became a dedicated scholar and practitioner when it came to his favorite subject--profits. An eye opener from start to finish, it confirms what a lot of people have long suspected: that Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (with its dark and brooding words) is fiction based on fact. The book is then an attack on the Belgian colonialism of the Congo, on the exploitation of innocent people in their own country for selfish gain, and the ruin of a native culture and environment. It tells much and explains why inside the human heart, Europeans were as "dark" as the Africans. So much for culture and civility. For the sake of even handedness the author, for example, mentions that Conrad, while denouncing European lust for riches in Africa, was also an investor in a gold mine in Johannesburg. Here are the unvarnished truth about Henry Morton Stanley; the machinations that led the USA to be the first country to recognize King Leopold ll's claim to the Congo; the advent of E.D. Morel, the `greatest British investigative journalist of his time who's meticulous and painstaking research' withstood the test of time and further research. The natives in turn are not exactly paragons of primeval innocence, for many practised slavery and ritual cannibalism where prowess in warfare were symbolized by severed heads and hands (later practised by Leopold's henchmen in such horrific scale). The maiming of women (forced clitoridectomies) still occurs as in other parts of Africa, a brutal initiation rite in itself, which is just a custom. The attempts in psycho-analysis maybe far fetched but even if it hits or misses the point, it is an attempt to explain (as authors are supposed to) the why and the how. It takes immense effort to search for the truth or the underlying causes just as reaching conclusions about life's meaning is also difficult. This is a book which will be hard to ignore if one wants a better understanding of the Africa of today. There are parallels in this shocking story. The genocide of the Hereros in today's Namibia, Britain's mass killings of Aborigines in Australia (in the state of Tasmania, not one single native was left at one point in time), the destruction of the American Indians, World War ll's holocaust, the Soviet Gulag, the Turkish massacre of Armenians...somel are mentioned in passing in this book as an example of man's inhumanity to man. The main aim of the book maybe that we should not be a part or an instrument to "the politics of forgetting". One should just remember the well known quote of the philosopher Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it." Or perhaps Lord Acton's: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The book ends with the well-founded conclusion that the major legacy left to Africa by the colonial powers was not democracy as properly practised but authoritarian rule and plunder, as witnessed by contemporary events, perpetrated by some of its own native rulers to its own people.
Rating:
Summary: The cunning manipulator
Review: Any reader will be able to tell what horrified me. What fascinated me was the description of Leopold II's cunning manipulation of his own image. He bamboozled diplomats, most journalists, and the public in Europe and the U.S. His downfall (not that he really had much of one) or rather the downfall of his reputation came from a few journalists some Protestant missionaries. Hochschild bluntly points out that the Belgians in WW I managed to generate stories of German atrocities commited against them that largely never happened but were precisely what they had inflicted on the Congolese. Do I have a complaint? Yes , I would like more photographs (and the ones in the poorl bound edition I have are falling out).
| 
