[lbo-talk] Whitewash on the Dark Continent (John Dolan book review)

Joseph Wanzala jwanzala at hotmail.com
Thu Mar 2 09:22:36 PST 2006


as an antidote, may I suggest Howard French's A Continent for the Taking : The Tragedy and Hope of Africa.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375414614/102-5209214-2992952?v=glance&n=283155

"For the U.S., Africa is only a source for oil and other resources and a theater of misery, according to senior New York Times writer French, who reported on Central and West Africa in the 1990s. In contrast to that official detachment is French's own passionate engagement, both with what he sees close-up and with the politics and history. An African American raised in Washington, D.C., he has lived with his family in Africa, and he brings a unique perspective to the news in Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Congo. He is as critical of the corruption and greed of Africa's modern leaders as he is of the West, but he does blame much of the continent's trouble on colonialism and "faraway mapmakers" who patched countries together. Most damning is his criticism of the Clinton administration's preoccupation with the Bosnian crisis, while it ignored the much bigger Rwandan genocide and its aftermath. French's eyewitness reporting is unforgettable, as in the portrait of a Liberian child-soldier. The "hope" of the subtitle isn't here. Hazel Rochman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved"


>From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Whitewash on the Dark Continent (John Dolan book
>review)
>Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 08:57:18 -0800 (PST)
>
>The eXile 44 Feb 06
>Whitewash on the Dark Continent
>By John Dolan ( dolan at exile.ru )
>
>"The State of Africa A History of Fifty Years of
>Independence"-by Martin Meredith London 2005
>
>See it on Amazon.com...
>
>You Russians will instantly recognize the thesis of
>Martin Meredith's book. It's simple: turns out
>Africa's problems are the fault of:the Africans. Just
>like all Russia's problems in the late 1990s turned
>out to be all your own fault, after you had the
>effrontery not to transform yourselves into
>Republicans as quickly as Yeltsin's imported con men
>and thieves, exemplified by that erudite thief and con
>man Anders Aslund, had exhorted you to do.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list