King Leopold's Ghost tells a story of the Belgian King Leopold II and his misrule of an African colony, named (at the time) the Congo Free State. It is a wild and unpleasant story of a man's capacity for evil and the peculiar manifestation of it. In telling this story, Hochschild does a wonderful job of giving detailed descriptions, especially of the colorful individuals involved, both good and bad. His analysis of the situation is very solid, starting with ... point out that the killing of the Congolese was not an elaborate program of the ethnic genocide, it nonetheless represented murder on...

• Word Count: 2087
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate