Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this relentlessly angry but convincing polemic, Epstein (The Invisible Cure), visiting professor of global public health and human rights at Bard College, exposes the corrupt and murderous regime of Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for over 30 years. Though uneasy over Museveni's poor record on human rights, the U.S. government considers him a bulwark in the war against terrorism. Museveni's army defeated Uganda's previous military dictator in 1986, after five years of guerilla warfare. He took power promising peace and democracy, but almost immediately began suppressing democracy, rigging elections, and-with the help of massive amounts of American aid-using his army to oppress the Ugandan people and wreak havoc in neighboring nations (including Rwanda, where Epstein concludes Museveni bears major responsibility for the genocide). Epstein spent years in Uganda working on AIDS research, and most of the Ugandans she interviews are opposition members. She recounts Museveni's misconduct and bloody military adventures in painful detail, with the express goal of persuading the U.S. government to change its policy. That may be a tough sell, but Epstein succeeds in disclosing the nefarious deeds of a U.S. ally. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Review by Library Journal Review
Author (The Invisible Cure), journalist (The New York Times), public health consultant, and professor (human rights & global public health, Bard Coll.) Epstein weaves the life story of Ugandan journalist, political activist, and professor Kiwanuka Lawrence Nsereko into the modern history of Uganda to expose the unconscionable decades-long support by the United States and other Western governments of President Yoweri Museveni, a murderous dictator who has plundered foreign aid and natural resource funds to gain wealth and power and install and maintain similar strongmen in neighboring African nations. Epstein demonstrates how Museveni played U.S. administrations from Reagan through Obama by selling himself as the bulwark of democracy against Islamist extremism in East and Central Africa, building an army to intervene in (and exacerbate) conflicts in neighboring countries on behalf of "Western interests" in the "war on terror." Though others have written about Uganda in this context (Epstein cites particularly Ogenga Otunnu's Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda), Epstein's book is well written, well documented, and brief enough that it should be widely read. VERDICT Essential for anyone interested in American foreign policy as it relates to Africa.-Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A valiant attempt to disentangle the many threads snarled in the continuing African tragedy.Epstein (The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa, 2007) has reported extensively on Africa for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, among other publications. Here, the author recalls an African myth in which a wily hare outwits powerful but dimwitted enemies and then likens Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni to the clever hare manipulating bumbling Americans. She charges that the United States, while purporting to support the growth of democracies, has ignored his corruption and human rights violations as long as he has convincingly claimed that Uganda is a democracy and has appeared to be a bulwark against advancing Islamic terrorism. She reports that Museveni's American-trained army "has been highly effective in crushing nascent democracy movements in Uganda and in other countries," and she grimly details the dictator's outsized ambitions and atrocities against innocent people. The numerous unfamiliar African names and a plethora of abbreviations for various military forcese.g., NRA, LRA, RPF, AFDL, SPLAwill challenge readers who do not pay close attention to the text. Fortunately, Epstein prefaces her work with a concise timeline of events in Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, Zaire/Congo, and Somalia that can be consulted by readers struggling to understand her dense account of the violence and corruption that have beleaguered that part of the world. So what should the U.S. do to change the situation? According to the author, it's crucial that we renew the pledge to support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but a specific plan of action is not included. A sizzling indictment of Uganda's current strongman and of the American policy in Africa that supports his corrupt regime with generous foreign aid. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
