Overview

A remarkable memoir of an American's intimate engagement with the Congo, one throwing new light upon America's political challenges today. ""I was fascinated both by his life-altering experience in the Congo and by his first-hand picture of what happens behind closed doors on Capitol Hill."" -Adam Hochschild, best-selling author of King Leopold's Ghost and American Midnight This book is a revealing account of two episodes in America's Cold War-era foreign relations. A young American professor is caught up in a racially fraught crisis at an American White missionary-led university in the Congo and is publicly fired. Several years later, he becomes a key staff aide for a congressional committee battling to distance the U.S. government from the Congo dictator's human rights and corruption abuses. His interconnected experiences in these two fascinating places provide first hand insights into some of today's burning issues: the dynamics of racial conflict, the paranoia and narcissism of authoritarian regimes and the hidden dysfunctions of the U.S. Congress (including corrupting relationships with narrow-based domestic and foreign lobbyists), State Department (truth-shading and short-term thinking) and pundit press. Simultaneously, this is a tale of the author's tortuous personal growth and political maturation. He comes to understand how elements of his own personality have hindered his perception of hard-to-read political realities. The author's focus on individual agency in challenging environments resonates strongly today as increasing numbers of Americans study and work in authoritarian countries and strive to maintain democratic institutions at home. Refreshingly candid, self-critical, well-documented and, in the end, hopeful, this is the rare memoir that opens new windows onto both America's foreign policies and its internal political disorders.

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Reviews

"""Stephen Weissman has lived through some extraordinarily interesting times. I was fascinated both by his life-altering experience in the Congo and by his first-hand picture of what happens behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. And, of course, these two worlds he experienced so intimately were intricately connected. Besides being an absorbing read in itself, this book will be essential source material for future historians exploring the American role in independent Africa."" - Adam Hochschild, best-selling author of King Leopold's Ghost and American Midnight. "" 'From the Congo to Capitol Hill' offers an intimate glimpse into the evolution of American policy in a region of the world critically important to modern life and yet rarely in the headlines. Weissman uses his own experiences in the Congo and Congress - remarkable and at times humorous - to explain the competing political interests at play in America's relationship with its ""client regime,"" as Weissman aptly describes the Mobutu reign. It's a valuable read for anyone interested not only in the making of U.S. policy in Africa, but of U.S. foreign policy more broadly."" - former Senator Russell Feingold. ""Steve Weissman is one of the premier experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of Africa's most troubled countries. Steve's memoir, which reads with the smoothness of a Graham Greene novel, traces his intimate relationship with the Congo from his early academic misadventures in Kisangani to his important work on Capitol Hill. He shares significant political insights on former President Mobutu, the role of the CIA and the U.S. in elevating him to power and the battles in Congress to reduce military assistance to the Mobutu's government. Although Steve's book is a personal journey, it provides useful policy insights for analysts, activists and academics working on tough African issues."" - Johnnie Carson, former United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs ""As a political memoir, Steve Weissman's book From the Congo to Capitol Hill is a magnum opus by an American scholar and public servant who has spent much of his life learning from and interacting with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.... this magnificent book in which the author is so honest in showing his own strengths and weaknesses...Taken together with his earlier books on U.S. foreign policy in the Congo and the weakness of the U.S. Congress in foreign policy, it is a memoir that people interested in learning more about these topics ought to read.""- Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, Professor of African and Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"

Author Information

Stephen R. Weissman is the author of American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960-19 (Cornell University Press, 1974) and A Culture of Deference: Congress's Failure of Leadership in Foreign Policy (Basic Books, 1995, 1996). A political scientist, Weissman has taught and researched at Fordham University, New Jersey City University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Dallas, and Howard University. He has published widely on American foreign policy in various regions of the the world, including the roles of Congress, the CIA and international mediation, as well as on the breakdown of the American campaign finance regulation system.

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