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WHITE MALICE

Name: WHITE MALICE
Author: Susan Williams
ISBN: 978-1-5417-6829-1

THE CIA AND THE COVERT RECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA

by Susan Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 2021

Rigorous reporting reveals “America’s role in the deliberate violation of democracy” in newly independent African nations.

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A deeply distressing history of CIA involvement in plots to eliminate certain regimes in Africa, particularly in the Congo and Ghana, just as the countries shook off European colonial rule in the mid-20th century.

Between the independence of Ghana in 1957 and the CIA–backed overthrow of President Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, the CIA made an intense, rapid infiltration into Africa. Though not well known to lay readers, this history comes vividly to life in the capable hands of Williams, the author of Spies in the Congo (2016), among other investigative works. Despite being democratically elected, the popular leaders Nkrumah of Ghana and Patrice Lumumba of Congo were vilified by U.S. officials, who were nervous about (fabricated) overtures to the Soviet Union. Ostensibly for reasons of national security during the Cold War—and to keep precious uranium and other minerals within American control—the CIA operatives swung into action, at President Dwight Eisenhower’s behest, orchestrating the 1960 coup d’etat in Congo, led by Chief of Staff Joseph Mobutu, which resulted in Lumumba’s assassination. Through interviews and meticulous archival research, Williams exposes the extent of CIA agents’ involvement, both American and African, delivering a consistently authoritative and astute narrative. She also shows the collaboration of businessmen such as Maurice Tempelsman, who had massive financial interests in Africa. These operations were not only dubious, but expensive. In fact, they “ranked as the largest covert operation in the agency’s history, costing an estimated $90-$150 million in current dollars,” and many were undertaken by so-called cultural organizations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, “a CIA front with an Africa programme based in Paris and with fingers in most parts of the world.” While the Senate’s 1975 Church Committee investigation into the Lumumba affair was rightly hailed as a major breakthrough in accountability, Williams emphasizes that the results are inconclusive due to missing documents and ongoing secrecy.

Rigorous reporting reveals “America’s role in the deliberate violation of democracy” in newly independent African nations.

Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5417-6829-1

Page Count: 672

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: June 18, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
SPIES IN THE CONGO
by Susan Williams

- BOOK REVIEW
WIND RIDER
by Susan Williams

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BRAVE MEN

by Ernie Pyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2001

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The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.

Pub Date: April 26, 2001

ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2

Page Count: 513

Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL HISTORY | MILITARY | HISTORY

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GHOSTS OF HIROSHIMA

by Charles Pellegrino ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 5, 2025

This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.

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A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.

Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”

This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.