Adam Hochschild 
Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays 

In this rich collection, bestselling author Adam Hochschild has selected and updated over two dozen essays and pieces of reporting from his long career. Threaded through them all is his concern for social justice and the people who have fought for it. The articles here range from a California gun show to a Finnish prison, from a Congolese center for rape victims to the ruins of gulag camps in the Soviet Arctic,  from a stroll through construction sites with an ecologically pioneering architect in India to a day on the campaign trail with Nelson Mandela. Hochschild also talks about the writers he loves, from Mark Twain to John Mc Phee, and explores such far-reaching topics as why so much history is badly written, what bookshelves tell us about their owners, and his front-row seat for the shocking revelation in the 1960s that the CIA had been secretly controlling dozens of supposedly independent organizations.

 

With the skills of a journalist, the knowledge of a historian, and the heart of an activist, Hochschild shares the stories of people who took a stand against despotism, spoke out against unjust wars and government surveillance, and dared to dream of a better and more just world.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations

Introduction


The Surveillance State

1 • Lessons from a Dark Time

2 • Students as Spies

3 • Hoover’s Secret Empire

4 • The Father of American Surveillance

5 • Prison Madness


Africa

6 • The Listening House

7 • All That Glitters

8 • A Showman in the Rainforest

9 • Heart of Darkness: Fiction or Reportage?

10 • On the Campaign Trail with Nelson Mandela


India

11 • India’s American Imports

12 • Palm Trees and Paradoxes

13 • The Brick Master

14 • The Impossible City


Europe

15 • Our Night with Its Stars Askew

16 • Shortstops in Siberia

17 • A Homage to Homage

18 • On Which Continent Was the Holocaust Born?

19 • Sunday School History


America

20 • Pilot on the Great River: Mark Twain’s Nonfiction

21 • A Literary Engineer

22 • A Nation of Guns


The Continent of Words

23 • You Never Know What’s Going to Happen Yesterday

24 • Practicing History without a License

25 • On the Road Again

26 • Books and Our Souls


Acknowledgments

Article Sources

Photo Credits

About the author

Adam Hochschild is a journalist and author who has written on issues of human rights and social justice. His books include the bestselling King Leopold’s Ghost. He has been a finalist twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award and once for the National Book Award. He has been awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and is a two-time recipient of the Gold Medal of the California Book Awards.