Before Pol Pot's Kampuchea, Hitler's Auschwitz, and Stalin's Gulag, there was Belgian monarch Leopold II's Congo. King Leopold's Ghost Important Quotes 1. Feb. 3, 2021. However, the avarice and deceit of King Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo (15 million dead) has been something of a revelation. Scesso , 06/14/2015. My issue with it is that the subject matter is horrific. Hello Select your address All Hello, Sign in. Find books like King Leopold's Ghost from the world’s largest community of readers. Leopold was a monster in a world full of monsters. It is a wild and unpleasant story of a man's capacity for evil and the peculiar manifestation of it. It's a meticulously researched and incredibly insightful book, and one of the biggest takeaways for me was that most of the activists who fought the horrors of Leopold's Congo didn't actually object to the practice of colonialism in and of itself; they were simply protesting its violent excesses in one colonial state. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Thus began the lucrative slave trade to supply workers for Brazil’s mines and plantations. recounts the crimes against humanity of Belgium’s King Leopold II, whose brutal imperialist regime sparked the creation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the first major human-rights protest movement of this century.Hell-bent on building grandiose state monuments and palaces and on swelling royal … Hello Select your address Books Hello, Sign in. The book has been justly praised. Thus began the lucrative slave trade to supply workers for Brazil’s mines and plantations. Goodreads members who liked this book also liked: 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. 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. And that dark heart continues to beat in our chests. "Patrice" is a father of seven children, all seeking to educate themselves here in Canada. The hellish extent of the nightmare inflicted on these people by Western greed simply beggar’s belief. A colonial morality play. Skip to main content.sg. The story in "King Leopold's Ghost" is a powerful one -- colonization taken to its extreme -- but the book is rendered mediocre by the author's trite moralizing, lack of historical rigor, and tiresome reliance on depicting every actor with either a halo or horns. But the surprisin…, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, As good a rifle company as any, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, US Army, kept getting tough assignments--responsible for everything from parachuting into France early DDay morning to the captur…, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, At the heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and unstaunchable war in which millions have died. King Leopold's Ghost A masterfully written book about the greed and glory many sought in Africa and the wake they left behind. The King Leopold’s Ghost Community Note includes chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quizzes written by community members like you. Adam Hochschild’s “King Leopold’s Ghost” is an account of a man’s rise of power who was very cruel and did unimaginable things. ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’ Will Chronicle One of the Worst Mass Murderers in History Ben Affleck is set to direct a drama about a holocaust that’s rarely discussed. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. Start by marking “King Leopold's Ghost” as Want to Read: Error rating book. He remarked that the people of the Congo are in more dire straights today than when they were colonized by Belgium. The story of almost every monster of history seems to lie in a hunger for fame, glory or a twisted patriotism or ideology. Journalist-memoirist Hochschild (Finding the Trapdoor, 1997, etc.) A powerful powerful book! You think you know, but you actually don’t. 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 … King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild [Book Summary – Review] – Good Book Summaries [Daily Updated – 700+ Books] King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild [Book Summary – Review] Written by Savaş Ateş in History King Leopold wasn’t the main European colonialist to misuse the assets, and individuals, of another nation. Leopold, here an antagonist of extraordinary guile, is only weakly connected to the governmental and business interests with which he worked; the reader is given pages of anecdote concerning the king's depravity with nearly no overview of the system in which he operated. I did not know much of King Leopold before this book, but I did know that he was responsible for many atrocities in his private colony Congo. 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