The Mirror at Midnight
by Adam Hochschild
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Description
History lies heavily on South Africa, and Adam Hochschild brings to bear a lifetime's familiarity with the country in an eye-opening work that blends history and reportage. Hochschild looks at the tensions of modern South Africa through a dramatic prism: the pivotal nineteenth-century Battle of Blood River -- which determined whether the Boers or the Zulus would control that part of the world -- and its contentious commemoration by rival groups 150 years later. This incisive book offers an show more unusual window onto a society that remains divided. In his epilogue, Hochschild extends his view to the a show lessTags
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Author Information

16+ Works 9,738 Members
Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942. As a college student, he spent a summer working on an anti-government newspaper in South Africa and worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964. He began his journalism career as a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Then he worked for ten years as a magazine editor and show more writer, at Ramparts and Mother Jones, which he co-founded. He has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. His first book, Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, was published in 1986. His other books include The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey; The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin; Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels; King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa; Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves; and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. He teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Mirror at Midnight
- Original publication date
- 1990
- Important places
- South Africa; Zulu Kingdom
- Important events
- Battle of Blood River, South Africa (1838)
- Disambiguation notice
- Full title (1990): The mirror at midnight : a South African journey / Adam Hochschild
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Anthropology, Travel, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.800968 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity Ethnic and national groups standard subdivisions / Ethnic and national groups with ethnic origins from more than one continent, of European descent standard subdivisions Biography And History Africa South Africa and Africa, Southern
- LCC
- DT2247 .B56 .H63 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Africa History of Africa South Africa KwaZulu-Natal. Natal
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 81
- Popularity
- 391,245
- Rating
- (3.94)
- Languages
- English, Polish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 4


























































