Rating: 
Summary: Author with an ax to grind
Review: This book starts out okay, but then lapses into the author lecturing the reader about how horrible Europeans are. If you like Europe bashing, this book is for you. Otherwise steer clear.
Rating: 
Summary: An eye-opener!
Review: Ignorance of this particular episode in history caused me to procure this book upon reading a review. And I was not sorry. In fact, I was shocked that these events were allowed to be lost in history. The writing is well organized and executed and develops into a swift and picturesque read. So vivid, in fact, that one is left feeling the need for a thorough cleansing after reading the inhumane acts the "civilized" world visited upon the Congo. It's very obvious the author is passionate about telling this story with a veil of judgement surrounding it, the book's only flaw, and I don't see how one could have written around that. In a way, this book leads your interest to King Leopold, himself, a very complex and enigmatic personality. This is definitely a good book.
Rating: 
Summary: Should be required reading
Review: This book should be required reading for world history education. Adam Hochschild has performed a service to humanity by presenting the gruesome facts about the extermination of a people through greed, corruption and ritual murder in such a way as to present a fair report championing the rights of the oppressed, while explaining the motivations of the oppressors within the beliefs of the times. This book was impossible not to finish, mainly because to deny the enormity of the slaughter and the secrets exposed felt like a personal rejection of the innocents. Months later I'm still thinking about it. What is so soulshattering is that the Congo again, starting in 1959, has experienced yet another unbelievable decimation of its population through (admittedly well-intentioned) polio vaccination and misguided food sources resulting in the crossover of SIV to AIDS. Who is writing their story today?
Rating:
Summary: a kingly book..
Review: I agree with so many of the reviewers previous who praised this book. It's a monumental piece of writing, besides being a fervent indictment of the colonialist mind. The indictment is made without reserve, its scaffolding always present, and there's genuine intellect around the pages. I remain astonished at the efficiency of the prose; Hochschild leads a heady charge to the middle of what these things mean, his own humanity in full array. It really is masterful. I would only add-- make no mistake, the key to this book lies in the way Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is brought to heel, by subtle and instructive means, especially in the chapter 'Meet Mr. Kurtz.' It is from THAT place of intense truth, as from a hot central core, that this book spins out its dreadful tale. Page after page, one is stung anew at learning the exactly dissected layers of these creatures-- Leopold, Stanley, these monsters feeding from a decadent culture, one already in decline, though none but soothsayer knew it then. The prose is as clean and free as the story it reveals is filthy and made of oppression; I think that clash has a great deal to do with how affording an experience reading this book is. It's a book of sorrow, nothing really has prepared one for it; but Hochschild works a kind of love over this book, and the rewards are immense. Recommendation, no reservation.
Rating: 
Summary: On balance, worth the read
Review: I bought this book because I had heard its author interviewed on NPR some time ago, and the story Hochschild had to tell about the exploitation of the Congo and its people by Europe generally and King Leopold specifically sounded facinating. And, in fact, I'm glad that I read this book because it has informed me about a genocide of which I had known very little. However, unlike most of the reviewers here, I thought that the book was fairly flawed in a few key respects. First, I didn't find it to be particularly well written or edited. More significant, however, is the fact that -- in what I assume was an effort to make the subject more accessible -- the author repeatedly attempts to psychoanalyze many of the key actors on the basis of both very little information and twenty-first century views of psychology and human behavior. Hochschild's depiction of Stanley is one of many examples: I would have preferred less unsupported speculation about the impact that the absence of a father had on Stanley's personality development, and more on what Stanley actually did. Moreover, I often felt that the psychological assessments were very poorly wrought -- reading like implausible carricatures of various historical actors and, unfortuantely, minimizing the role played by the larger colonial culture in the perpetuation of racism and exploitation. As I said, though, I'm glad I read the book and know (to some degree) what happened in the Congo.
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Summary: "The past is not dead. It's not even past." (W.Faulkner)
Review: As an historian and advocate of international human rights, Hochschild has written a work of history that reads like a novel and expands the memory of human race. His association of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" with the reality in Congo opens a new perspective for a classic that so far has been read as an allegorical of Freudian parable. With occasional lapses of narrative and more than a few suppositions, this book has been criticized by the scholarly oriented as being "popular history" with novelistic touches. The reader might in fact feel there is a void in terms of data and the information might be sketchy, but he will not be able to avoid been shocked by the content of this book. King Leopold II was an intelligent man, deceitful, hypocritical, and deprived of morality. With political dexterity he carved for himself a "slice" of the the African continent, created his Congo Free State and run it as a private corporation from which he enriched himself for 23 years. Profits derived from the exploitation of ivory and rubber. As a product of his time, Leopold played the same game as other European nations, when the prevailing racism and imperialism gave way to mass murder, slavery and genocide. His colonialism might be considered the cruelest of them all (what scale is used to measure cruelty is an open question), with an estimated 10 million natives been killed, a "cut and run" method. Using the media, he manipulated his way, convincing the world his actions were fundamentally humanitarian (put an end to the Arab slave market). The story is told through several biographical sketches of the principal heroes (E.D. Morel, George Washington Williams, William H. Sheppard, Sir Roger Casement, and Hezekiah Shanu) and the villains (Leopold himself, his accomplices, and the unconscious perpetrators of all the hypocrisies). The heroes fought to expose Leopold's crime and eventually forced him to recounce his rule over Congo. His "politics of forgetting" (burning all his Congo State archives) was not enought to erase history. A far-reaching consequence was the creation of the Congo Reform movement, a foreruner of Amnesty International. The book exposes ample moral dimension: how greedy men can ravage other people for their own well being, it counter argues any rationalization of slave trade be it by Europeans or Americans, and it focuses on heroism and depravity of human existence. It is a tale as important in its own time as it is today because the sources of evil described by Hoshschild are still among us. As stated by W. Faulkner, "The past is not dead. It is not even past." And to quote Hochschild himself: "For some 80 years -- first under Leopold, and then.. under the Belgian colonial adminstration -- the Congo had the experience of being plundered, for the profit of those overseas. No one should be surprised that this was followed by more decades of plunder, at the hands of Mobutu and the multinational corporations he was in league with. And let's not forget... slavery -- both indigenous and transatlantic! Democracy is a prety fragile plant... and none of Congo's heritage has been fertile soil for it to grown in."
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Summary: Hochschild just as brave as Morel
Review: I discovered King Leopold's Ghost while doing a research on Congo after reading C.S. Forester's book The Sky and the Forest, presently being discussed on the A&E boards. Reading Hochschild's book was very useful in understanding a great part of the Congo history. I also read Heart of Darkness but it only added more questions for me and Hochschild's book had all the answers. I consider Hochschild's book just as commendable as Morel's work a century earlier. Hochschild especially for bringing this topic to the attention of today's generations and learn so much about a forgotten history or a history many of us had never learned before. Forester's book The Sky and the Forest is a tale told from the natives' perspective, divine king Loa and his people who lived through the horrors of the Arab slave trade and then saw their kingdom destroyed by King Leopold's army. Hochschild's book answered so many questions I had while reading Forester's book, I wanted to know all about the Congo and became fascinated with the story of Morel and many other supporters who worked so hard for the Congo's cause. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who read The Sky and the Forest.
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Summary: Another reader in France
Review: Having recently read King Leopold's Ghost, I would first like to point out that this book will never permit you to look at the world in the same manner again. As a student studying international affairs, I have been allowed to cut past all of the rhetoric (thank tothis book) so often found in these dry articles and books that I study, to see the extent to which greed and evil has driven the shaping of this world. Hoschschild outlines the steps by which the insecure, greedy Leopold carved for himself a piece of Africa so that he could rank with the other colonial powers of his day. The killing of over 5 million Africans, many just for sport, meant little in the race for profit, dominance, and adventure for the (depuis toujours)savage Europeans. This book is an important expose into the complex manners in which greedy men have ravaged other peoples for the sake of their own well-being. Reading this book helps to explain the recent happenings in the DROC, or Zaire-Rwanda region. As for the Frenchman whose review is listed as well, your comments are yet another sad manifestation of the work done by DeGaulle and others that have told French people that you are the center of the earth. The most provincial minded, hypocritical, insecure people of all the 'world powers', the tainted interpretations of history that the majority of people here walk around repeating show that you all are just as duped as the Belgians were about what their nation has done to African peoples. As bad as Belgian atrocities were in the Congo, have you not heard of the countless skinnings, maimings, murders, and rapings of the slaves in all of France's Carribbean (Antilles) holdings in the 19th century, namely Haiti? Do you think that events such as these are fiction, too? we must have read different books, because I found Leopold's Ghost tediously documented. I suggest you learn how to do research and maybe you will realize that the sources cited by Hoschschild are far more original, trustworthy, and painstaking researched than the tainted, revisionist material I have read by several 'well-respected' Sorbonne historians!! You point out British barbarism? What of the recent arrest of Mitterand's son for covert arms sales to African war mongrels? And of the last administration's Minister for African Affairs boasting of his personally handpicking African leaders? I believe you can read about both of these events in Le Monde, I think their writeres have well-documented sources! Have you not read of the several French wars for supremacy in Africa (namely a dominant vantage point in the slave trade) in such books as The Race to Fashoda, or do you not know of the millions of murders the French army committed as Algeria was kicking you all out? Did you not know that LePen was a main proponent of France's dominion over Algeria, as France sought to maintain a stranglehold on its dwindling empire in the 1960's, a move made successful by the economy-crushing CFA zone?! Events such as these are built on a foundation of slavery, exploitation, and theft in nations such as the Congo, Central African Republic and Senegal, to name a few, as you know full well. I find the typical French stupidity and (unfounded) arrogance you display toward the author and Americans very annoying, as your nation, and your 3rd rate countrymen, can hardly stand to criticize others for fantasy. You accuse Americans of encouraging fiction to be written for sensational purposes, I think the American society is far ahead of French people in terms of telling the truth about certain atroicites committed in the past, even if this book was about Belgium. I think you really need to re-read your review and realize how silly you sound, and as the man from Putney said, there will surely be books to come about a few of the not so nice things France has done in her jockeying for position on the world stage.
Rating:
Summary: Very good but horrifying book
Review: The majority of reviews have the description right. Rather than repeat what they say, I will add that the book is very well written and easy to read. The author does not pour out excessive detail on the atrocities (although he does not shy away from presenting important details when necessary), so it's not a sickening read. That all the events could have happened as they did is indeed sickening. However, in this great darkness, there is the light of several very compelling personalities whose great industry on behalf of what was right finally brought down Leopold.
Rating:
Summary: Hard-hitting
Review: Incredibly riveting account. Exposes and forcibly brings home to the present the horrific, heinous crimes and genocide committed by King Leopold, European powers, and the Americas (North and South), against millions of native blacks in colonial Africa. Sad, sobering. Highly insightful of international politics during the "scramble for Africa" in the latter 19th century. Connects with the "stricken continent" Africa of today. Absolutely devastates any attempts to minimize, rationalize, excuse or justify the slave trade as practiced by the Europeans and Americans. As Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle state in the introduction of their book, "Into Africa" - "...it is impossible to underestimate the deadly effects of the European traffic in slaves. Hard as it may be to believe, there have been attempts to 'justify' the slave trade by pointing out that Africans occasionally enslaved each other long before Europe got there. But nothing - nothing - has ever equalled the European theft of thirteen million Africans." "Theft" is not a sufficient word. Brutal, callous, sadistic, genocidal murder, unimaginable cruelty and tortuous punishment, coersion and maiming of the black African men, women, and children by the slave-drivers and slave-traders. Against this nightmarish Hell is the inspiring, courageous, and instructive story of the heroes of this first civil rights movement: E.D. Morel, George Washington Williams, William H. Sheppard, Sir Roger Casement, Hezekiah Andrew Shanu. Hochschild's masterful book will compel professors to re-frame their interpretations and discussions of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". I had earlier read Thomas Pakenham's excellent book "The Scramble for Africa" which was an extraordinary and wonderfully told story including many of the same brutal facts. Adam Hochschild's book, however, hits you hard at a gut level. It will not leave you unchanged.
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