Source: Antiwar.com
by Michael Holmes
“First published in 1999 and updated in a revised 2006 edition, Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost serves as a stark historical warning at a time when Western politicians and commentators habitually frame global politics as an epic struggle between virtuous democracies and barbarous autocracies. The book shows in forensic detail how one of Europe’s most constitutional monarchies oversaw a regime of forced labor, mutilation, rape, torture and mass death on a scale comparable to the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.” (06/16/26)