• King Leopold's Ghost

  • A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
  • By: Adam Hochschild
  • Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
  • Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,904 ratings)

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King Leopold's Ghost  By  cover art

King Leopold's Ghost

By: Adam Hochschild
Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
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Publisher's summary

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company's ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II's vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber. Outbound ships carried little more than soldiers and firearms.

Correctly concluding that only slave labor on a vast scale could account for these cargoes, Morel resigned from his company and almost singlehandedly made Leopold's slave-labor regime the premier human rights story in the world. Thousands of people packed hundreds of meetings throughout the United States and Europe to learn about Congo atrocities. Two courageous black Americans - George Washington Williams and William Sheppard - risked much to bring evidence to the outside world. Roger Casement, later hanged by Britain as a traitor, conducted an eye-opening investigation of the Congo River stations.

Sailing into the middle of the story was a young steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming over all was Leopold II, King of the Belgians, sole owner of the only private colony in the world.

©1998 Adam Hochschild (P)2010 Random House
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light." (Amazon.com review)
"Hochschild's superb, engrossing chronicle focuses on one of the great, horrifying and nearly forgotten crimes of the century: greedy Belgian King Leopold II's rape of the Congo, the vast colony he seized as his private fiefdom in 1885....[M]ost of all it is a story of the bestiality of one challenged by the heroism of many in an increasingly democratic world." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about King Leopold's Ghost

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Very informative.

This book was very well written & covered a vast amount of information that has not been readily available in modern day academia. All human beings that oppose tyranny should read this book.

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Timeless inhumanity

A blueprint for the wealthy and influential to unleash psychotic evil while manipulating their public image to feed their limitless avarice. The likes of Leopold II still exist among us.

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Everyone should read

Everyone in the world should read this book.

[Six more words to finish the review]

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Should be required reading

In this era of ravenous censorship on the Right, this book is a terrifying and critical reminder of the danger of forgetting: not only the forgetting which occurs naturally with age and distance but that willful forgetting which causes humans time and again to subdue, dehumanize, and slaughter. I was tearful in listening but I will not forget this book or it’s story.

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Belgian Congo

My goodness, the inhumanity! It amazes the history left untold. A brilliant presentation of a horrific event.

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excellent historical data. excellent narrator. Now

excellent historical data. excellent narrator. now I know the difference between all the Congos.
Mankind has done brutal things..pity indeed.

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Amazing!

Well written and informative! Left me in tears over atrocities committed in Africa. I learned so much from this book.

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Excellent Historical Account

Fascinating listen that was as entertaining as it was informative. Hochschild delivers historical fact so compelling that it reads/listens like fiction. This book could easily be classified as true crime and should absolutely be included in all must-read lists concerning European dominion of African states.

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Fantastic book — well-researched and detailed

This is an incredibly well-researched, detailed, and beautifully-written book about one of the most tragic events in global history.

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Audible Organization is bad

This is a phenomenal story of the heart wrenching truths of the Congo. it's chilling and often freeze dropping. My complaint lies only with audible. The chapters are all messed up and it repeated itself when it switched chapters. Just kind of annoying.

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