Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

A war that began in 1996 has torn through Congo, which borders nine countries and is as large as Western Europe, and millions have died in it. Jason K. Stearns covers the First and Second Congo Wars, focusing on how Rwanda's government intervened inside Congo through the 1990s and early 2000s. He tells the story through people who lived through the conflict and people who drove it, including the child soldier who killed President Kabila, village pastors who lived through massacres, a Hutu activist who saw fellow refugees hunted down, and architects of a war that grew directly out of the genocide in Rwanda. Stearns tries to understand the logic of the mass violence and the lasting absence of stability.

Patrick Collison has included it on his Bookshelf page.