Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Daily Book Graphics #286 / Rhodesia





This is an 800 page book published by the Federal Information Department of Rhodesia in 1960. Until now everything I knew about Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) came from Doris Lessing's novel the Grass is Singing and a chilling piece in The New Yorker that described the atrocities of the Bush War (1964-1977). This book was written to promote Rhodesia as a nation (technically it never became a recognized state), on the rise under white minority rule. Things did not work out. It's impossible to look at this book without being creeped out by the self-delusion that led the white Rhodesians to think that 280,000 whites ruling over 6 million non-whites was a sustainable arrangement.

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