Adam Hochschild

“As a reader, I devoured this well-crafted, original book with increasing interest. As someone who has also written about South Africa over the years, I felt increasing envy. Douglas Foster has penetrated deep into the life of that endlessly fascinating country in a way that few, if any, other journalists have done--or have even thought to try. The result is extraordinary.” Adam Hochshild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost A brutally honest expose, After Mandela provides a sobering portrait of a country caught between a democratic future and a political meltdown. Recent works have focused primarily on Nelson Mandela's transcendent story. But Douglas Foster, a leading South Africa authority with early, unprecedented access to President Zuma and to the next generation in the Mandela family, traces the nation's entire post-apartheid arc, from its celebrated beginnings under "Madiba" to Thabo Mbeki's tumultuous rule to the ferocious battle between Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Foster tells this story not only from the point of view of the emerging black elite but also, drawing on hundreds of rare interviews over a six-year period, from the perspectives of ordinary citizens, including an HIV-infected teenager living outside Johannesburg and a homeless orphan in Cape Town. This is the long-awaited, revisionist account of a country whose recent history has been not just neglected but largely ignored by the West. Douglas Foster, the former editor of Mother Jones magazine, is the recipient of the Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and the Alicia Patterson Fellowship. Formerly senior editor of the Center for Investigative Reporting and director of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Foster is an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.

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"Adam Hochschild is the rare historian who fuses deep scholarship with novelistic flair. In his hands, World War I becomes a clash not only of empires and armies, but of individuals: king and Kaiser, warriors and pacifists, coal miners and aristocrats. Epic yet human-scaled, this is history for buffs and novices alike, a stirring and provocative exploration of the Great War and the nature of war itself". Tony Horwitz, author of A voyage long and strange

"In prose as compelling as a masterful novel, Hochschild illuminates the lives of those who consigned millions to oblivion, and also introduces us to those who fiercely opposed the carnage—those who imagined, as we might, that the world could be otherwise. We emerge from this exemplary book with the knowledge that war is not inevitable, and those who work for its abolition inherit their dedication from sane men and women of great moral strength who recognized, as we must, that the future depended upon them. Hochschild’s accomplishment, as a writer and historian, is formidable and inspiring." Carolyn Forché, editor of Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness

Adam Hochschild has written for The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and many other newspapers and magazines. In King Leopold’s Ghost, Bury the chains, and other books, Hochschild has earned a reputation as a master of suspense and vivid character portrayal. His skill at evoking such struggles for justice has made him a finalist for the National Book Award and won him a host of other prizes.

Location: Street: Porter Square Shopping Center Additional: 25 White Street City: Cambridge, Province: Massachusetts Postal Code: 02140 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)