King Leopold's Ghost
A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
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Narrated by:
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Geoffrey Howard
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By:
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Adam Hochschild
About this listen
In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company's ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II's vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber. Outbound ships carried little more than soldiers and firearms.
Correctly concluding that only slave labor on a vast scale could account for these cargoes, Morel resigned from his company and almost singlehandedly made Leopold's slave-labor regime the premier human rights story in the world. Thousands of people packed hundreds of meetings throughout the United States and Europe to learn about Congo atrocities. Two courageous black Americans - George Washington Williams and William Sheppard - risked much to bring evidence to the outside world. Roger Casement, later hanged by Britain as a traitor, conducted an eye-opening investigation of the Congo River stations.
Sailing into the middle of the story was a young steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming over all was Leopold II, King of the Belgians, sole owner of the only private colony in the world.
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Girt. No word could better capture the essence of Australia.... In this hilarious history, David Hunt reveals the truth of Australia's past, from megafauna to Macquarie - the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are. Girt introduces forgotten heroes like Mary McLoghlin, transported for the crime of "felony of sock", and Trim the cat, who beat a French monkey to become the first animal to circumnavigate Australia.
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Typically irreverent.
- By patricia heffernan on 12-27-15
By: David Hunt
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A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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Chief Seattle and the Town That Took His Name
- By: David M. Buerge
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the first thorough historical account of Chief Seattle and his times - the story of a half century of tremendous flux, turmoil, and violence, during which a native American war leader became an advocate for peace and strove to create a successful hybrid racial community.
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Important
- By Scoticus on 03-15-21
By: David M. Buerge
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Jacksonland
- President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab
- By: Steve Inskeep
- Narrated by: Steve Inskeep
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jacksonland is the thrilling narrative history of two men - President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief John Ross - who led their respective nations at a crossroads of American history. Five decades after the Revolutionary War, the United States approached a constitutional crisis. At its center stood two former military comrades locked in a struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling democracy. Jacksonland is their story.
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Fantastic and Thoughtful
- By Elizabeth Westbrook on 05-05-16
By: Steve Inskeep
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David Crockett: The Lion of the West
- By: Michael Wallis
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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His name was David Crockett. He never signed his name any other way, but popular culture transformed his memory into "Davy Crockett", and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. Best-selling historian Michael Wallis casts a fresh look at the frontiersman, storyteller, and politician behind these legendary stories.
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Author is very bias.
- By Michael on 05-31-12
By: Michael Wallis
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The Last Slave Ship
- The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning
- By: Ben Raines
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts.
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Wow. Just Wow.
- By Pinkhippiechick on 02-11-22
By: Ben Raines
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Spectacle
- The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga
- By: Pamela Newkirk
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1904 Ota Benga, a young Congolese "pygmy" - a person of petite stature - arrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World's Fair. Two years later the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines across the nation and in Europe.
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hard pass
- By savvy shopper on 02-26-19
By: Pamela Newkirk
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Lost Kingdom
- Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure
- By: Julia Flynn Siler
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A thriving monarchy had ruled over Hawaii for generations. Taro fields and fish ponds had long sustained native Hawaiians but sugar plantations had been gradually subsuming them. This fractured, vulnerable Hawaii was the country that Queen Lili‘uokalani, or Lili‘u, inherited when she came to power at the end of the nineteenth century.
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Fascinating story, sparsely told
- By Great Tutu Kona on 01-17-12
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The Road to Dawn: Josiah Henson and the Story That Sparked the Civil War
- By: Jared A. Brock
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This sweeping biography about the man who was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is an epic tale of courage and bravery in the face of unimaginable trials. The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson - a dynamic, driven man with exceptional intelligence and unyielding principles, who overcame incredible odds to escape from slavery and improve the lives of hundreds of freedmen throughout his long life. He was immortalized by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
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Great book and very informative
- By plcd22 on 07-04-18
By: Jared A. Brock
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It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.”
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The Fortunes of Africa
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VAST & WELL RESEARCHED
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High-Speed Empire
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Less than a decade ago, China did not have a single high-speed train in service. Today, it owns a network of 14,000 miles of high-speed rail, far more than the rest of the world combined. Now, China is pushing its tracks into Southeast Asia, reviving a century-old colonial fantasy of an imperial railroad stretching to Singapore, and kicking off a key piece of the One Belt One Road initiative, which has a price tag of $1 trillion, and reaches inside the borders of more than 60 countries.
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Spain in Our Hearts
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For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa's photographs. But Adam Hochschild has discovered some less familiar yet far more compelling characters who reveal the full tragedy and importance of the war.
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Great book very well written and narrated
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What listeners say about King Leopold's Ghost
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Roy
- 01-16-11
A Worthwhile Book
I have a particular interest in the African Diaspora, the US reconstruction, and Jim Crow years. This book provides fine background on a particularly dark era. First, Leopold II’s story is well documented here and those who are unfamiliar with the story will greatly benefit. Individuals who became cognizant of the “goings on” in African under the King and fought are aptly covered. King Leopold realizes that Europeans are profiting from African in general and the Congo in particular and wants his share of the booty. How he does that and the aftermath is the story of this book. I would have enjoyed gaining a more nuanced understanding of the culture, communities, and detail related to what was happening “on the ground” in the Congo. Essentially, this book details, outlines, and retells what took place. There are examples and a few short biographical sections (a African head collector for example), but the story does not come to life. This is not a new book (1999), but very worthwhile. Geoffrey Howard reads wonderfully.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Alessandro
- 10-17-21
Great book
I had to read the book for school but it was absolutely amazing. My only complaint is that the audio didn’t always match my book. Especially chapter 19 where almost half of the spoken recording was skipping parts of the written book I had, and/or shortened the sentence present in the book. A few times they completely added new parts to ch 19 that I didn’t have in my book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- DZLEX
- 04-03-18
Just Astonishing
To see how todays so-called western democracies treated their colonies! A horrific genocide of epic proportions yet no apology nor compensation ever made to Congolese people by Belgium! Same goes for Britain, France, Spain, Portugal etc
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- Harold Capshaw
- 01-21-16
A great book, let down so slightly by recording
An excellent account of the Congo. The narration can be janky at transitions but this is easily looked past.
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- am2980
- 09-25-19
worth the long listen
the reader was a bit monotone, but ok considering the length of the volume. Had to it in portion because the gravity of the history was overwhelming
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- Mr Larry Lundy
- 06-09-19
BEYOND EVIL
Great narration of Leopold's still long-ignored stomach-churning evil despotic theft and genocidal murder of the Congo and its people.
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- Daniel L. Hood
- 12-07-18
Enjoyable Yet Dark
I enjoyed listening to this book talking about the Congo Free State. I only knew it through Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but to hear that it was worse in real life really astonished me.
Only issue I had was when the narrator repeated sentences; can't tell if that was him or the editor didn't catch it.
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- Jacob
- 10-07-20
Good overall
Author shows a mild bias on some subject not related to the Congo and also tends to meander a little bit. Not sure why every historical work concerning events around the turn of the century needs to take an extended detour into the lives of American socialites.
That being said, I enjoyed it and feel it provides a good introduction to the events in the Dutch Congo.
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- Shane
- 03-03-21
Just when you think history is horrible enough...
You read something like this and realize it's WAY worse than you thought. Just look up what a "chicotte" is and you'll get an idea of what I mean. It's a great listen though. Check it out, for your health.
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- sammy
- 05-04-21
Interesting history of a brutal regime
I knew next to nothing about the Belgian Congo’s history. Mr. Hochschild has written a well-flowing and informative tale of horror that is regrettably true. This is an important work as we as a species must never forget the tragedies of The Congo, Rwanda, Armenia, etc.
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