When I started this book, George Floyd was alive. His name was known only to his loved ones, friends and community. Now his daughter is without her Daddy, and we know his name. Imagine a mountain of corpses, George's body is flung somewhere near the top of this pile. I say near the top since bodies have been added since his murder. Hochschild's points to the nameless dead, beneath poor George's black body. Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost needs to be widely read. While it deals with the particular horrors of King Leopold’s reign of terror in the Congo, it makes clear that the butchery characteristic of King Leopold’s reign were features of all European colonies. I first moved from Ireland to England in 1995. Quickly making English friends, one of the striking observations was how these otherwise well informed and articulate individuals knew next to nothing about Ireland, it’s history and how that history informed it’s current p...
mediocrity articulated. Deathly dull book reviews