Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschildis an American author, journalist, and lecturer. His best-known works include King Leopold's Ghost, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918, Bury the Chains, The Mirror at Midnight, and The Unquiet Ghost...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
Adam Hochschild quotes about
risk loved-ones
I can certainly sympathize with writers who don't want to put themselves or their loved ones at risk.
political world easy
In Canada, the U.S. and most of Europe it may be easy to take political stands, this is something for which you can be forced to pay with your life, or your freedom, in many other parts of the world, from Iran to Russia to Pakistan to China.
determination years two
In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago, Zachary Macaulay, who once traveled on a slave ship across the Atlantic, taking notes. Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings, to bring us this vivid, searing account of the wide network of human trafficking and servitude which spans today's globe.
war our-world way
The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
sports football war
One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place within the half-time show at a Dallas Cowboys football game. No one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush's Iraq War.
snakes scotch please
I'm after a snake and please God I'll scotch it.
missing chance notes
Newt Gingrich seldom misses a chance to note that he is a historian.
lying war loss
Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.
thinking political today
I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or to want to stay out of the fray, but today is not one of those moments.
justice pieces substitutes
No international court can ever substitute for a working national justice system. Or for a society at piece.
silence trying division
And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is shaped far less by what we celebrate and mythologize than by the painful events we try to forget. Leopold's Congo is but one of those silences of history.
time hardship distraction
Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.
buried human instinct patriotic tribal
I think that, in almost all human beings, there is buried a profound tribal instinct that makes us very susceptible to being aroused to patriotic fervour.
britain history squashed united
I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.