Customer Reviews

The History of Congo:

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Through out college you write lots of papers. I had always been a big reader but not a writer. When it came time to do research for papers it was difficult for me to find a correlation between enjoyable reading and research. I had to do a paper for a US foreign relations class and decided to do it on the 1960's Congo Crisis. I picked this book up first thankfully to read for a historical concept of what the Congo was like. I had originally just picked it up to read the first couple of chapters but ended up reading the whole thing cover to cover. Not only did it have tons of useful information (I foot noted the book 12 times in a 28 page paper) but was very enjoyable to read. It presented lots of facts and was very clear when it was giving you opinion or unverifiable information. This is a difficult thing when dealing with the history of this country. The book remained neutral and fair when discussing political issues and presented both sides. This book opened up my eyes to the possibilities of researching when you find the right topic and good information for creditable sources. After writing the paper I officially decided that I wanted to continue my education in graduate school and I credit this book.

Another one volume history of Congo in English has been published, this one by Ch.
Didier Gondola, THE HISTORY OF CONGO. The chapters are rather brief on
each of the chronological periods of
Congo's history: precolonial, conquest, Leopoldian, Belgian Congo,
decolonization, each of the three republics, and an epilogue on the war
beginning in 1998. There is also a timeline of historical events,an
introduction to various aspects of today's Congo, paragraph-long biographies
of notable people, and a selected bibliography with commentary.

Gondola has written earlier comparing Brazzaville and Kinshasa, and he has
roots in both cities. He tends to be critical of Christian missions and
churches. His familiarity with the material seems stronger in the later periods.
Overall it seems reasonably accurate, and is quite readable.