Sense of Place Stars: Congo

Fiction and Nonfiction Titles Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.
  • Last Expedition: Stanley's Mad Journey Through the Congo
    Author: Liebowitz, Daniel & Charlie Pearson
    Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 0393059030 Date: 2005
    starLJ
    Henry Morton Stanley undertook the greatest African expedition of the 19th century to rescue Emin Pasha, last lieutenant of the martyred General Gordon and governor of the southern Sudan. Instead of ten months, the trip took three years and cost the lives of thousands of people, as Stanley's column hacked its way across the last great, unexplored territory in Africa. Stanley's secret agenda was territorial expansion on the model of Leopold's Congo or the British East India Company.
    Updated 6.9.05
  • The Assassination of Lumumba
    by Witte, Ludo de
    Publisher: Verso $ 29 ISBN: 1859846181 Date: 2001
    starKirkus
    Employing an array of official sources as well as personal testimony, De Witte unravels the appalling mass of lies that have surrounded the murder of the prime minister of the Republic of Congo. A network of complicity is revealed, ranging from the Belgian government across the United Nations to the CIA.
  • In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
    by Wrong, Michela
    Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0060188804 Date: 2001
    starPW
    In the Congo, a country rich with diamonds, gold, copper, uranium, oil, and timber, the average worker was reduced to a living income of $120 a year under the rule of Mobutu. This is a brilliant journalistic account set amid the heart of the apocalypse--a nation plunged back to the Iron Age, whose citizens miraculously continue to survive.
    Suggested Reading: Travel Tales