Adam Hochschild

Born 5 Oct 1942

From New York City, New York, United States · Nationality: United States · Writes nonfiction

Quotes

“It is always tempting to believe that a bad system is the fault of one bad man.”
King Leopold's Ghost
“The movement’s other great achievement is this. Among its supporters, it kept alive a tradition, a way of seeing the world, a human capacity for outrage at pain inflicted on another human being, no matter whether that pain is inflicted on someone of another color, in another country, at another end of the earth.”
King Leopold's Ghost
“In the Soviet Union, for example, shooting or jailing political opponents at first helped the Communist Party and then Josef Stalin gain absolute power. But after there were no visible opponents left, seven million more people were executed, and many millions more died in the far-flung camps of the gulag.”
King Leopold's Ghost
“From the colonial era, the major legacy Europe left to Africa was not democracy as it is practiced today in countries like England, France, and Belgium; it was authoritarian rule and plunder.”
King Leopold's Ghost

Books by Adam Hochschild in order

Books by Adam Hochschild in the order they were published, from Half the Way Home (1986) to American Midnight (2022).

Barbara W. TuchmanNarrative history aimed at a general audience, especially The Guns of August on the outbreak of the First World War.
Erik LarsonNarrative nonfiction that builds gripping but researched accounts of historical events.
Howard ZinnHistory written from the perspective of ordinary people and social movements, as in A People's History of the United States.
Sebastian HaffnerA first-person account of life in Nazi Germany that combines personal observation with political history.
Hannah ArendtPolitical writing on totalitarianism and the mechanisms of state violence, for readers interested in the political side of his books.