Author Archives: hbcumoney

In The March of Folly, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman tackles the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ persistent folly in Vietnam. The March of Folly brings the people, places, and events of history magnificently alive for today’s reader.

In January 1961, seven months after Congo won independence from Belgium, the country’s first elected head of state, Patrice Lumumba, was killed because of fears that he would nationalize Belgian corporate interests in Congo.

Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Republic of the Congo and a pioneer of African Unity, was assassinated on 17 January 1961. His crime had been to defy the Belgian Government which sought to maintain a covert imperialist hand over the country even after independence was finally won in June 1960. Ludo De Witte reveals the appalling mass of lies that have surrounded the murder. Making use of official sources and government testimony, he uncovers a network of complicity spreading from the Belgian government to the United Nations and the CIA. This book, already translated into four languages, prompted the Belgian parliament to establish an official commission of inquiry into Lumumba’s assassination. In his afterword to this new edition De Witte discusses its findings.