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I read Martin Meredith's 750-page tome, The State of Africa. It tells the history of the last 50 years of Africa, since Ghana became independent in 1957. With most of the last 20 years or so I was already familiar, and I learned more of the historical background and complexities as well as the bigger picture and a sense of the momentum of events as they unfolded.

To read how Africa's post-colonial leaders were the most egregious plunderers of the wealth and of the human and economic potential of Africa leaves me incredulous and horrified, as if peering into hell. Should that I would be hardened to such stories of greed and atrocity and inhumanity, but I am not.