Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa by Bill Berkeley ISBN: 0-465-00642-6 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 05 March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Genocide without regrets
Comment: Bill Berkeley, who has reported on Africa for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Washington Post, provides us with an in depth, first-hand account of the last decades of the twentieth century in some of the most violent places in the world. Interspersing interviews with the powerful and humble with historical sketches, he conducts a harrowing tour of Liberia, Congo-Zaire, South Africa, the Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda. Despite the endless slaughters, Africa, he shows us, is not the "dark", mysterious or frighteningly "other" place we commonly think. It is unfamiliar. For that we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Berkeley's thesis is that Africa's problems do not originate in ancient "tribal" animosities. Without providing historical background (though he indicates where it is to be found), he begins by observing that, before the arrival of colonizing Europeans, Africa was a functioning continent, that is, neither heaven nor hell, but functioning. The colonizers - he speaks primarily of the British and Belgians - ruled through what might be called "divide and exploit." Where there were tribal differences, the Europeans created animosity by using one group as their proxy to oppress another. Where there were no tribes, the Europeans created them, as in Rwanda, and set one over the other. The colonizers thought this worked well, and, from their skewed view, it did. They made their money and got out, telling themselves that ripping off a continent was the same as civilizing it. Those who'd been unfortunate enough to have served their colonial sentence at the bottom of the heap tended toward resentment. Those who has served as the Euroman's proxies tended toward fear. What we like to call "tribal" is nothing more than post-Colonial class war.
And we all - Americans, Europeans, Soviets and Africans - love to manipulate the situation for private gain: the ripping off of Africa, chapter two. That's the story Berkeley tells and tells very well. Whether he's interviewing an American policy expert who invokes "tribalism" to justify supporting the most evil thugs and refusing to stop the slaughter, or the South African police who use "tribalism" to set African against African to keep South Africa under white domination, or the African leader (who is likely to possess a degree, even a doctorate, from a prestigious American university) who rises to power on a slogan of "tribalism", Berkeley shows that "tribalism" is a myth for all seasons.
Berkeley is not shy about confronting leaders with the massive death their quests for power have spawned. Each bemoans the violence, yet each answers that he has no regrets about his role in it. None. Most of those interviewed are now dead, dead of conflict or "natural" causes. Those who remain among the living will, in the not too distant future, be dead. Their lives, their slaughters, their shallowness and indifference can be summed up in a few dozen pages. They created nothing except death.
The Africa Berkeley reveals is not so different from the "rest of the world." "Tribes", corporations, governments tend to fall somewhere along the spectrum of mafia-like organizations. Africa is like everywhere else, only, for now, a little more so.
The only criticism I would offer is I would like to have learned about the resisters, those who struggle for food, housing, medical care, freedom and human rights. That Berkeley thought them outside the scope of the book tends, despite his own best efforts, to reenforce the stereotype of the "African."
Rating: 4
Summary: An Unpleasant, Well-Done Look at Evil
Comment: Bill Berkeley has taken an unpleasant subject and poured his life time's work into this examination of evil and distilled it into this well done book, The Graves are Not Yet Full (Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa). The author has earned the right to tell these stories and does well by them as a journalist. He concentrates on the Big Men, the tyrants whose personalities are behind the anarchy and slaughter in Africa, and shows how the situations are manipulated by these men (and this includes, pointedly, a representative of the United States in the chapter on the assistant secretary of state) to maintain their persoanal power at the expense of the people of whom they are responsible. It is frightening story and, despite the author's small ray of hope added at the end, seemingly impossible to change. This is a great book for those who want to see the situation in Africa beyond the meager news reports of victims and villians.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Look At Another Side
Comment: This book is a stunning and gruesome portrait of genocide in Africa. Reporter Bill Berkely travelled to the war zones of Africa to meet the victims of racial violence and the inflictors of such violence. Berkeley's focus is more on the criminals and their actions that effect their nation. The interviews and experiences Berkely had with these evil individuals are fascinating and terrifying. If you have never come into real and forceful evil, you should read this book and learn what is going on on the other side. It is also good to be informed on this subject so that help can be given where it is needed.
 |
Title: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch ISBN: 0312243359 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: When Victims Become Killers : Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda by Mahmood Mamdani ISBN: 0691102805 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 12 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild ISBN: 0618001905 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: The United States and Africa: A Post-Cold War Perspective by David F. Gordon, David C. Miller, Howard Wolpe, American Assembly ISBN: 0393318176 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.65 |
 |
Title: In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo by Michela Wrong ISBN: 0060934433 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
