Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.79 (701 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B0718ZXL7L |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 370 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-04-13 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
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. In this deeply reported book, Jason K. And yet, despite its epic proportions, it has received little sustained media attention. He depicts village pastors who survived massacres, the child soldier assassin of President Kabila, a female Hutu activist who relives the hunting and methodical extermination of fellow refugees, and key architects of the war that became as great a disaster as - and was a direct consequence of - the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it. Through their stories, he tries to understand why such mass violence made sense, and why stability has been so elusive. Through their voices, and an astonishing wealth of knowledge and research, Stearns chronicles the political, social, and moral decay of the Congolese State.
The Heart of Darkness redux Of the too many hellholes on this planet, perhaps the worst is the Congo. Starting in the sixteenth century it became the center for the European and Arab harvesting of slaves. Not only were millions of Africans hauled away as slaves, the slave trade devastated what previously had been a relatively stable system of government. Then, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Congo was ravaged by colonialism, led by the monstrous King Leopold II of Belgium. Millions of severed hands; millions of unnatural deaths. When colonial territories in Africa became untenable, Belgium. slyesa said An excellent read explaining so much. I read this after a recent trip to Uganda. I've visited Africa multiple times and this book gives a fantastic background to more of the continents challenges and issues than I expected. I wanted to learn more specifically about the DRC and came away with a much better comprehension of multiple countries.. worthwhile read Benji A really useful background book to understanding the complexities of the terrible ongoing strife in the DRC. Very well researched and written in a very easy-to-read style, it offers personal accounts of the war from all sides. Disappointing that the sexual violence, an issue DRC has become infamous for, warranted only a few lines, with a dire lack of interviews of women and survivors.Also, books that give historical and socio-political backgrounds should not always bow to the pressure to come up with recommendations. That part of the book came across as a hurried simplistic s