In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo

In a country rich with diamonds, gold, copper, uranium, oil, and timber, the average worker was reduced to a living income of $120 a year under the rule of Mobutu. From 1965 to 1997, his regime bled the country of some $4 billion. This is both a brilliant journalistic account and a grimly humorous story set amid the heart of the apocalypse—a nation plunged back to the Iron Age, whose citizens miraculously continue to survive.