When has the Congo NOT been in collapse?

Instapundit/Michael Totten points to this recommendation by Yaacov Lozowick for the book Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa.  I haven’t read the book, but I’m sure that it’s well-written: Michael’s a pretty reliable gatekeeper for that sort of thing.

But… if there’s a place where Hell and Earth can be said to reliably intermix, it’d be the Congo.  It’s been like that since the 19th Century and the Congo Free State*, and you probably don’t want to read up on the Belgian Congo when you’re having a good day, just eaten, and/or looking for a reason not to join a Cthulhu Mythos cult.  Its history since then has been unmitigated awfulness leavened by the occasional bout of mere misery – and it seems like everybody else on the planet has joined in in making the place worse, and I’m not excluding the USA on this one.

So I don’t know if you really want to read the latest chronicle of frightfulness, really.

Moe Lane

*The owner of which – King Leopold II of Belgium – ended up dying in his bed, more’s the pity.  Particularly since the anarchist movement picked the guy with the worst damned aim in Europe to excise the guy.