Author Guide · Narrative History
Books Written by
By 2013 more than 600,000 copies of King Leopold’s Ghost were in print in a dozen languages, a remarkable number for a history of rubber, forced labour and a Belgian king’s private colony in Central Africa. Its author, Adam Hochschild, born in New York in 1942, came to history from journalism: he reported for a daily paper, worked at Ramparts, co-founded Mother Jones in 1976 and taught for years at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. His books follow the people who resisted, from British abolitionists and First World War pacifists to Americans who fought in Spain. This guide covers his eight key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 1986–2022 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Adam Hochschild’s best-known books are King Leopold’s Ghost (1998), about Belgian rule in the Congo, Bury the Chains (2005), on the British campaign against slavery, and To End All Wars (2011), on Britain in the First World War. Start with King Leopold’s Ghost; his most recent book, American Midnight (2022), turns to repression in the United States after 1917.
Where to Start with Adam Hochschild
If you want his defining book
→ King Leopold’s Ghost (1998) — the Congo under Leopold II and the campaign that exposed it.
If you want a story of a movement that won
→ Bury the Chains (2005) — how a London campaign helped end British slavery.
If you want the First World War from the other side
→ To End All Wars (2011) — the Britons who refused to fight.
If you want American history
→ American Midnight (2022) — the crackdown on dissent from 1917 to the early 1920s.
8 Adam Hochschild Books, in Order
Half the Way Home
His first book, a memoir of growing up as the only son of Harold Hochschild, a wealthy and reserved businessman, and of their difficult relationship. Michiko Kakutani reviewed it favourably in The New York Times.
The Unquiet Ghost
Hochschild spent six months in Russia in 1991 talking to Gulag survivors, former camp guards and the children of both. Among them are two childhood friends from the Siberian town of Kolpashevo, one whose father was executed in 1937 and one whose father ran the town’s secret police, and Vladimir Glebov, son of the executed Party leader Lev Kamenev.
King Leopold’s Ghost
How King Leopold II of Belgium ran the Congo as his personal possession, extracting ivory and rubber through forced labour, and how an international campaign exposed it. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the Mark Lynton History Prize, and in 2006 became a documentary directed by Pippa Scott and narrated by Don Cheadle.
Bury the Chains
The British campaign against slavery, from a meeting of a small group of men in a London printing shop in 1787 to abolition in the 1830s. Thomas Clarkson and the former slave-ship captain John Newton are among its figures; the campaigners used posters, mass mailings, badges and a national boycott of sugar. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the PEN USA Literary Award.
To End All Wars
Britain in the First World War, told through those who ran the war and those who opposed it, sometimes in the same family: the pacifist Charlotte Despard was the sister of Sir John French, commander on the Western Front, and the war split the Pankhursts. More than 20,000 British men refused the draft. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Spain in Our Hearts
The Spanish Civil War through a group of mostly American characters, among them Robert Merriman, commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, and his wife Marion, as well as Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and George Orwell. It also traces how Texaco’s chief executive Torkild Rieber supplied Franco with oil on credit. It was a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize.
Rebel Cinderella
A biography of Rose Pastor Stokes, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who started work in a Cleveland cigar factory in 1890, aged 11, then married the millionaire James Graham Phelps Stokes and became a socialist speaker. In 1918 she was convicted under the Espionage Act.
American Midnight
The suppression of dissent in the United States after it entered the First World War in 1917: the Espionage and Sedition Acts, the imprisonment of the Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs and the Palmer Raids of 1919–1920. It won the Gold Medal for nonfiction at the California Book Awards.
In What Order to Read Adam Hochschild
None of his books continues another, so read by subject. Publication order does show a pattern: the first books are personal and reported, from his own family to Russia after Stalin, and from 1998 he writes large narrative histories built around campaigns of resistance.
The three histories of Britain and its empire, King Leopold’s Ghost, Bury the Chains and To End All Wars, read well together; E. D. Morel, a hero of the Congo book, returns as a war opponent in To End All Wars. Rebel Cinderella and American Midnight cover the same American years from two angles.
A reading path
1. King Leopold’s Ghost (1998)
2. Bury the Chains (2005)
3. To End All Wars (2011)
4. Spain in Our Hearts (2016)
5. American Midnight (2022)
Everything Else Adam Hochschild Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Reportage and essays
3
3 books · 1990–2018
- 1990The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journeytravels in apartheid South Africa; new edition 2007
- 1997Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travelsessays; won the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
- 2018Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essaysessays on history, politics and writing
The years · 1942–2022
Quick facts about Adam Hochschild
- Known for
- Narrative histories of people who fought injustice, above all King Leopold’s Ghost (1998), which brought the atrocities in Leopold II’s Congo to a wide readership.
- 1942
- Born in New York City
- 1976
- Co-founds Mother Jones
- 2005
- Bury the Chains
- Born
- 5 October 1942, New York City
- Education
- Harvard University, BA in History and Literature, 1963
- Journalism
- Daily newspaper reporter, Ramparts, co-founder of Mother Jones (1976)
- Teaching
- Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley
- Married
- The sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Honours
- Lannan Literary Award (2005); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014)
The red mark is 1998: King Leopold’s Ghost, his history of Leopold II’s Congo.
How Adam Hochschild Writes: History Through Its Dissenters
Hochschild builds each history around a cast rather than a thesis. King Leopold’s Ghost follows the shipping clerk E. D. Morel, the diplomat Roger Casement and others who exposed the Congo; To End All Wars sets the generals against pacifists, sometimes their own siblings; Spain in Our Hearts follows a handful of Americans through the war.
His background is reporting, not academic history. He travels and interviews when he can, as in Russia in 1991 for The Unquiet Ghost, and writes in scenes with named people. The books rest on published scholarship and archives, but are written for general readers.
His subject is moral choice: who spoke up and who did not. In American Midnight he writes that “virtually no one inside the federal government spoke up for civil liberties.” That directness has drawn criticism, especially in Belgium, where some historians called King Leopold’s Ghost moralising and disputed its death toll.
Watch
Adam Hochschild on American Midnight at the Commonwealth Club
Adam Hochschild talks with George Hammond at the Commonwealth Club of California about American Midnight, his account of repression and censorship in the United States from 1917 to 1921; the video was posted in October 2022. From the official Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California channel.
Frequently asked questions about Adam Hochschild’s books
How many books has Adam Hochschild written?
Eleven. Eight are the key books on this page, from Half the Way Home (1986) to American Midnight (2022); the other three are The Mirror at Midnight (1990) and two essay collections, Finding the Trapdoor (1997) and Lessons from a Dark Time (2018).
What are Adam Hochschild’s books in order?
Half the Way Home (1986), The Unquiet Ghost (1994), King Leopold’s Ghost (1998), Bury the Chains (2005), To End All Wars (2011), Spain in Our Hearts (2016), Rebel Cinderella (2020) and American Midnight (2022).
Where should I start with Adam Hochschild?
King Leopold’s Ghost (1998), the book that made his name. If you prefer a story with a hopeful ending, start with Bury the Chains (2005).
What is Adam Hochschild’s most famous book?
King Leopold’s Ghost (1998). It won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and had more than 600,000 copies in print in a dozen languages by 2013.
Is the death toll in King Leopold’s Ghost accurate?
It is disputed. Hochschild, following earlier estimates, writes that the Congo’s population fell by about half, some 10 million people. Belgian historians such as Jean Stengers called that an exaggeration, the demographer Jean-Paul Sanderson estimates a decline of 1 to 5 million, and others attribute much of the fall to epidemics and falling birth rates as well as violence. Hochschild has replied that colonial-era government reports supported the estimate of a halved population.
Has King Leopold’s Ghost been adapted?
Yes, as a documentary of the same name in 2006, directed by Pippa Scott and narrated by Don Cheadle.
What prizes has Adam Hochschild won?
Among others the Duff Cooper Prize and Mark Lynton History Prize for King Leopold’s Ghost, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award for Bury the Chains, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for To End All Wars, and two Lionel Gelber Prizes. Bury the Chains was a National Book Award finalist.
Is Adam Hochschild a historian or a journalist?
Both. He worked as a newspaper reporter and at Ramparts, co-founded Mother Jones in 1976 and taught at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and in 2009 received the American Historical Association’s Theodore Roosevelt–Woodrow Wilson Prize.
Is Adam Hochschild still alive?
Yes. He was born on 5 October 1942 in New York City, and still publishes journalism. His most recent book is American Midnight (2022).
Who is Adam Hochschild’s wife?
The sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of The Second Shift and Strangers in Their Own Land.
Footnotes
- Adam Hochschild — Wikipedia
- King Leopold’s Ghost — Wikipedia
- Adam Hochschild — UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
- WWI: A moral contest between pacifists and soldiers — NPR, 2011
- Review: Spain in Our Hearts — The Volunteer (ALBA), 2016
- Review: American Midnight — Alta
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Virtually no one inside the federal government spoke up for civil liberties.”
— Adam Hochschild, American Midnight (2022)
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