Customer Reviews

The Tragic State of Congo: From Decolonization to Dictatorship

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This well-researched and heavily-footnoted history of the Congo provides the reader a solid understanding of the many forces at work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Of particular note are the discussions of establishment of a more-or-less modern constitutional government and the various threats to it today. The author also clearly lays out who did what to whom in the aftermath of Mobutu's fall, valuable information to have when trying to understand what's happening in the DRC today.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo

The author lucidly creates both an historical timeline and a conceptual web of Congolese history. The long series of simple, declarative sentences both recapitulates a half-century of serious scholarship, with nearly a footnote per sentence, and offers new insights into the current crisis, as local and "international" forces and factions regroup after Mobutu. An invaluable Epilogue integrates the latest U.N. and U.S. actions and prospects, plus an Appendix of author's interesting correspondence with "locals," give some sense of "what is to be done" to avoid the old "internationalist" cycle: the cheapest possible extraction of minerals, with least possible regard for the locals - who may someday both own and control their own destiny.