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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
This is vital reading for any student of British colonial and African history.
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Stanley Meisler
[A] remarkable and lucid account... Anderson's narrative -- bolstered by realistic descriptions of life in Kenya and informed analysis of the causes of the Mau Mau insurrection -- is ample, judicious and elegant. [16 Jan 2005, p.R5]
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Outstanding
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The Guardian Richard Dowden
Where Anderson gets inside the minds and passions of both sides and, best of all, inside the agony of those simply caught up in the horror and forced to make appalling choices, [Caroline] Elkins remains rigidly one dimensional in her understanding.
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Favorable
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The Independent Stephen Howe
Anderson's research on Mau Mau trials and their victims, and Elkins's on the detention camps, not only transform our understanding of empire's end, but should produce political shock-waves... Anderson is stronger on the broad contexts of British colonial policy and ideology.
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Favorable
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London Review Of Books Bernard Porter
It is the scale of the British atrocities in Kenya that is the most startling revelation of these books.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Max Hastings
Anderson's marshalling of evidence seems more dispassionate, and is thus even more damning.
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Favorable
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The Nation Daphne Eviatar
A vivid and comprehensive new account of the war... Not only offer[s] an important corrective to the long-distorted story of the end of British empire in Kenya but also serve[s] as a stark reminder of the cynical justifications that fear can foster and that history eventually lays bare.
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Favorable
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Booklist Gilbert Taylor
A dispassionate but disturbing account, Anderson's history will be vital to understanding Kenya's terrible endgame of colonialism. [1 Jan 2005, p.805]
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Anderson's study adds materially to the understanding of not only the Kenyan war but also of colonialism's end in Africa.
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Favorable
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New York Review Of Books Neal Ascherson
Of the two authors David Anderson does the most to rescue Mau Mau from pathology and to restore the movement to history.
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Favorable
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The Economist
Mr Anderson's re-examination of the court records in order to assess whether British justice was fair or flawed does not make for happy reading.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Mahmood Mamdani
Anderson's political acumen gives us the clues necessary to reflect on the war's lessons.
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Mixed
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San Francisco Chronicle Austin Merrill
Anderson and Elkins are academics, and in places their books feel overstudied. Their research and meticulous attention to detail are remarkable, but at times their narrative threads fray, and we are left with page after page of gory details and data.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Daniel Bergner
Anderson's book... never manages to render a vivid martyr. Examples of colonial judicial corruption and hypocrisy are thoroughly explored, but little room is left for character.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Robert Oakeshott
For many there is doubtless something extraordinarily chilling and macabre about state executions, whether in colonial Kenya or today’s Texas.
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Unfavorable
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Daily Telegraph Nicholas Best
[Anderson is] righteously indignant at Britain's conduct of the war, yet do[es] not say what alternatives existed. [He] make[s] no attempt to put [himself] in the authorities' shoes, faced with nightly massacres in which oath-taking and witchcraft played an unpredictable part.
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