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I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
 
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I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation (Paperback)

by Michela Wrong (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 17.02
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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Much like Wrong's In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz (2001), covering the reign of Zaire's brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, this book taps at the world's conscience, asking who is to blame for the suffering and neglect of postcolonial African states; it takes Eritrea as case study—and victim. A veteran Africa correspondent for the Financial Times, Wrong writes in a pointedly digressive style full of narrative side roads that accommodate a daunting level of geographical and historical detail. Historical highlights include a colorful profile of the late 19th-century writer and Italian parliamentarian Ferdinando Marini that draws on his extensive memoirs about his tenure as the first civil governor of the region as an Italian colony. The early 1960s conflict, occupation and independence of this small neighbor to Ethiopia also make for a terrible, gripping story, including border disputes and bloody war with Ethiopia. A complicated history so punctuated with violence is not exactly easy to read about, but the author's extraordinary grasp of the postcolonial psyche and tormented national identity of this country makes it fascinating. Agent, Joy Harris.(June 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Review

"A gripping political thriller." (Monica Ali, author of BRICK LANE )

"An engaging read... Devastating detail... This is probably the best book that could be written about Eritrea." (Nation )

"Wrong's...original research is more illuminating, her eye more observant, her writing far more wry and witty." (The Economist )

"Contemporary history on the grand scale. I was entertained, informed and angered . . . A splendid achievement." (John le Carr )

"Vivid, penetrating, wonderfully detailed. Michela Wrong...has excavated the very heart and soul of the Eritrean people and their country." (Aminatta Forna, author of THE DEVIL THAT DANCED ON WATER )

"Engrossing, vividly written in the style of the best thrillers...It should become the standard work on the region." (Anthony Sampson, author of MANDELA: The Authorized Biography )

"With rich prose and the passion she brings to the subject of [Eritrea's] independence... Wrong provides a very readable journalistic." (Los Angeles Times )

"If you want to understand the world...I DIDN'T DO IT FOR YOU provides the best starting point." (The Progressive )

"Eloquent and impassioned . . . [A] splendid account of modern Eritrean history . . . Scrupulous and honest." (New York Times )

"Engaging history . . . A vivid story of a nation repeatedly trampled by foreign powers until it won its independence." (New York Times Book Review )

"A fascinating and tragic story . . . Wrong's account [is] gripping." (Daily Telegraph (London) )

"A highly readable, well-researched depiction of the region's serial exploitation by a parade of foreign predators." (Washington Post Book World )
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5.0 out of 5 stars must reading for anyone who cares about geopolitics, Feb 17 2008
By Brian Maitland (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
As the world ignores yet another war in Central Africa, maybe they ought to read this book on a pretty much previously ignored part of that continent and its wars. I had read Wrong's book on Central Africa (In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz) which is why I went for this one. Having said that, this is a much denser read. Chapters drag on but do stick with them as Wrong really does come up with great insights and detailed info on what exactly went on with Eritrea's struggles for independence.

What I also love about her writing is it does not come from some bleeding heart liberal nor pro-war neo-con stance. She writes almost matter of factly yet is able to make you feel as if you know (maybe not understand) all the characters right down to the foot soldiers or today's taxi drivers or market vendors that shaped, and continue to shape, the region.

The only thing I can add is this book should be required reading for every single citizen in the Western world. Maybe then, we'll start demanding our politicians wake up and make better geopolitical decisions.
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5.0 out of 5 stars SMALL COUNTRY, BIG HEART ACHE, Nov 30 2007
By James W. Derry (Courtenay, British Columbia, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation (Hardcover)
I do not know where to begin to praise this important book.
The author, Michela Wrong, is a British writer who is passionate about Africa. She has spent a decade traveling around the continent and has written extensively about it for Reuters and the BBC. Absolutely, she knows her stuff and keeps the reader astonished with what she has learned.
Ms Wrong's book is about the sad little country of Eritrea, the Biblical land of the Queen of Sheba. But it is also about the utter failure and betrayal of the United Nations to keep its promises to this country that was forced to wage so many destructive wars to keep its independence.
Before the United Nation's miserable failures in Sudan, Dafur, Rwanda, Serbia, etc, there was its model disaster in Eritrea. And before the UN, there was Italy and its colonies in east Africa of which Eritrea, now regarded as a basket case, was once the most modern on the continent. Defeated at the end of World War II, Italy also lost its small colonial empire. The victor, Great Britain, picked Eritrea clean and sold off its factories and infastructure for scrap, leaving its people destitute with nothing to build a real country on. Shortly thereafter, the English dumped the ex-colony, allowing the UN to betray its promises and make way for Ethiopia to absorb Eritrea as a province. Hence the beginning of the wars. And the famines.
And they were very nasty wars. Michela Wrong brilliantly communicates how the minds of the "rebels" worked. We are given an excellent lesson in the world of an underdog who knows it is right. And this confidence in a nobel cause gave the rebels the tenacity to take on not just the corrupt and cynical Haile Selassie, but his superpower backers: the USA and later the Soviet Union, who were using east Africa to fight wasteful proxy wars. I cannot think of any journalist who has been able to give a similar picture of today's celebrity terrorists, al-Qaeda.
Eritrea eventually had its day at the UN in New York and made the organization eat crow. But its hard won independence is already eroding and the tiny wars which most of the world does not hear or care about are stirring again.
Read this book. It almost makes you want to cry or scream. People should not have to live like this, nor be at the mercy of great powers with big picture self interests that always crush ordinary citizens. Michela Wrong has written a bench mark book about Eritrea and the devastated region around it.
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