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jameslaryn 's review for:
This book is excellent for unexpected reasons. All the quick reviews are true, it is a well told and well researched story with the excellent twists and turns that can only come from reporting on real life, but underneath this excellence is two things I have not experienced in everyday work.
First, the talk about British and American colonialism is straight forward and matter of fact. There is no white washing at all. There is no explaining it and reasoning it away. There is also no expanding on it, the travesties, theft, murder, and rape of people and countries are simple facts of history. In treating them so simply there is a power that would have diminished their importance to the story if they had been treated in any other ways. The book assumes that if you disagree with the facts, you have to do your own education on colonialism.
Second, I would put this book in the same very small category as Tim O'Brian's The Things We Carry. It is a book about a time in history, but it is also a book about now and possibly in time also prescient. O'Brien's book accurately predicts the horrors and folly of George W. Bush invasion of Iraq. It knows that AbuGrab prison and Gitmo will happen, without naming those places. This book is as much about the post colonial looting of Ghana as it is about the potential looting of America by confidence men in power. In reporting on what happened it also predicts a violent and disturbing time in any country where the elite look only to enrich themselves. Every American should read this book.
First, the talk about British and American colonialism is straight forward and matter of fact. There is no white washing at all. There is no explaining it and reasoning it away. There is also no expanding on it, the travesties, theft, murder, and rape of people and countries are simple facts of history. In treating them so simply there is a power that would have diminished their importance to the story if they had been treated in any other ways. The book assumes that if you disagree with the facts, you have to do your own education on colonialism.
Second, I would put this book in the same very small category as Tim O'Brian's The Things We Carry. It is a book about a time in history, but it is also a book about now and possibly in time also prescient. O'Brien's book accurately predicts the horrors and folly of George W. Bush invasion of Iraq. It knows that AbuGrab prison and Gitmo will happen, without naming those places. This book is as much about the post colonial looting of Ghana as it is about the potential looting of America by confidence men in power. In reporting on what happened it also predicts a violent and disturbing time in any country where the elite look only to enrich themselves. Every American should read this book.