|
All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo | 
 enlarge | Author: Bryan Mealer
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy Used: $12.25
You Save: $12.74 (51%)
New (38) Used (12) from $12.25
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 183032
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st U.S. Ed
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 1596913452
Dewey Decimal Number: 967.51034
EAN: 9781596913455
ASIN: 1596913452
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A foreign correspondent’s gripping account of his experiences in Congo, told through the long scope of the country’s dark and brutal history.
After covering a brutal war that claimed four million lives, journalist Bryan Mealer takes readers on a harrowing two-thousand-mile journey through Congo, where gun-toting militia still rape and kill with impunity. Amid burned-out battlefields, the dark corners of the forests, and the high savanna, where thousands have been massacred and quickly forgotten, Mealer searches for signs that Africa’s most troubled nation will soon rise from ruin.
At once illuminating and startling, All Things Must Fight to Live is a searing portrait of an emerging country devastated by a decade of war and horror and now facing almost impossible odds at recovery, as well as an unflinching look at the darkness and greed that exists in the hearts of men. It is nonfiction at its finest—powerful, moving, necessary.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
If you thank armed forces members for their service, make sure to also thank war correspondents. May 8, 2008
P. Narendorf
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mealer has written a testament to the importance of truth in reporting. Whether he planned at the beginning of his journey to become the eyes for Westerners like me on this struggle or not, he did and did it with the bravado that many of us have never had to summons in ourselves. His ability to document both the horrors and beauty of his experience and that of the Congolese he encountered is rare.
 Eye-Opening June 17, 2008
Christopher Berend (NYC)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Bryan Mealer brought to life a place that, sadly, most of us know little or care even less about. He takes far off characters in a far off war and gives them an easy familiarity. This book is not for the faint of heart--the war in Congo has killed millions through combat and disease, and Mealer does not shy away from its most brutal details. And yet, he does not revel in them either, as so many war correspondents haphazardly do. He simply writes what he sees. And what he sees is pretty amazing stuff. Highly recommended.
read this book for many reasons June 17, 2008
E. L. Paluck (Cambridge MA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I recommend this book for many reasons--Mealer's lyrical, colorful prose, insight into some of the most magnificent and heartbreaking events and places in the DRC, and finally, for a first hand account of how, why, and when news reaches us out of Africa. I'll recommend this book to my colleagues who study Congo, but also to family members who would like a window into this fiercely captivating and complicated place.
Personal Memoir Of A Humanitarian Catastrophe July 26, 2008
David Donelson
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bryan Mealer has penned a brutal memoir of his three years as a reporter in the Congo, three years when teenage gunboys roamed the countryside and city streets, when UN peacekeeping forces faced mystical leaders operating from jungle mountaintops, when rebel militias and government forces alike pillaged their own nation. It was a horrible time in the history of a country that has seen little else for the last hundred years.
While Mealer writes about the bloody atrocities he witnessed, the real story he tells is about himself. He's drawn back to the Congo three times, apparently addicted to the extreme discomfort and random violence he endures. His travels cover nearly the entire country from the capital of Kinshasa to the mineral-rich southern provinces to the guerilla-infested eastern region where an alphabet-soup of militias, foreign armies, and UN forces fight a never-ending war of terror, rape, and mutilation. He rides a newly-reconstructed rail line and even follows Conrad's trail up the Congo River via barge. At one point, he and his adventure-junkie buddies take off through the jungle on bicycles.
While Mealer tells us the names and stories of many Congolese he meets along the way, he never really gives much insight into them as anything other than victims. He says as much when he reflects on his bicycle journey:
"...once in the jungle, my own basic needs and level of comfort had stood in the way of learning anything. I didn't even know my riders' last names or anything about their families. I'd simply been too exhausted and hungry to care. It wasn't my proudest moment, and even now, those last days on the trail leave a sting of regret."
Still, All Things Must Fight To Live puts the reader close to the action and accurately reflects the aftermath of war and colonialism in one of the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophes.
Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo
Initially heartbreaking but ultimately redemptive journey through the heart of darkness of Congo's modern civil war April 29, 2008
Thomas Rielly (San Francisco & New York City USA)
Bryan Mealer, an editor and journalist for Harper's and Esquire takes us on a journey through the last seven years of the Congo, the nearly unknown and underreported but bloodiest civil war in recent history, where over 4 million people died. The first half of the book nearly breaks your heart as it describes a war of unprecedented savagery that imposed terrible suffering on civilians. The second half describes two journeys of hope against all odds, one up the fabled Congo River and one on the last operating rail line in the Congo. In turns lyrical and profoundly moving, All Things Must Fight to Live is a must-read if you care about Africa, peace and the dignity of each human being. Mealer proves a worthy successor to Joseph Conrad in his beautiful non-fiction narrative. Highly recommended.
|
|
|
|
| |
