This is the saddest book I ever read, and it's all true, and I bet, unless you are already something of an afrophile, you don't know most of it. It's the history of the Belgian Congo, the central African territory that was basically the personal private property of King Leopold of Belgium for decades. He milked it for all it was worth, and since he hid most of what he did (and burned his archives) we'll never know how much that was, although estimates are in the millions of (21st century) dollars.

Although Leopold never visited "his" Congo he reigned over it in terror. The pattern was set by the ruthless, self-serving Henry Morton Stanley, who brutalized and murdered scores of Africans in his quest to "discover" the continent. Leopold continued the violence, forcing the Africansinto slave labor. His officers killed entire villages if they refused to work for him, or didn't work hard enough. The work itself often killed them anyway. A few people dared to speak out against him, like the Englishman Morel and the Irish Casement, though he fought them with every weapon he had in his shameful, duplicitous arsenal.

The saddest parts might be in the very last chapter, which quickly brings us up from the end of Leopold's reign through its history as an official Belgian colony, to independence and, after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the long reign of Mobutu Sese Seko. It is in these chapters that I learned that, when Belgium grudgingly granted independence in 1960, there were only 30 Congolese university graduates in the country. Of 5000 civil service managers, 3 were Congolese. E., who was in Peace Corps in the Congo, told me there was 1 doctor.

There is a brief interview in this chapter as well, with a Belgian man who was an ambassador to Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1970s and knew nothing about the history of the Congo. Nothing.

If you ever wonder why Africa is in the state it's in, you may find part of the answer in this book.

As for the book itself -- it's outstandingly well written. Hochschild is smart, thorough, empathetic but not gullible, and extremely fair-minded (for instance, in pointing out other injustices that quietly continued while the world finally became outraged at what was happening in the Congo). He does just what I want a nonfiction writer to do: stick to the facts; stray into speculation only when it's really warranted; and make it explicitly clear when you do so. He does.