A review by _cararichardson
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

challenging informative sad medium-paced

5.0

I think this has been one of my favorite nonfiction reads. It definitely deserves the hype. Hochschild doesn’t mince any words and he admits any shortcomings his narrative has. The psychology of the people in this book is well explored, which I found fascinating. It’s an excellent and harrowing account of human nature and how time and time again we have repeated history while simultaneously rewriting it to be better than it was. What particularly struck me is that hindsight is 20/20; what we view as revolutionary or polarizing today will likely be considered the just point of view in the future. Revolutionaries like Morel or Casement are often not recognized until after death. Of course, I wish we had access to the perspective of Africans, but as Hochschild repeatedly reminds us, we don’t typically keep good records of the oppressed.
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