Histories of the Hanged

by David M. Anderson

An account of Britain's final bloody decade in Kenya, this book tells the story of the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau between 1952 and 1960. New findings cast the Gikuyu rebels--hardly the terrorists they were thought to be--in a new light and reveal the British to be brutal aggressors in a "dirty war" that involved, among others, Winston Churchill and Harold MacMillan. This book portrays a teetering colonial empire in its final phase--employing whatever military and propaganda methods were necessary to preserve an order that could no longer hold.