The book follows the ‘miserable’ life and career of Lt Emory Taunt to highlight the history of relations between the United States and King Leopold II's Congo. Taunt was the first resident American commercial agent and consul to the Congo. This is a fascinating story, particularly to a reader who, in the early 1960s, was responsible for the promotion of US commerce with newly independent Congo at the American embassy in Leopoldville. I was later consul in Stanleyville, and for a time was held a captive by Lumumbist rebels, the ‘Simbas’.

US diplomatic relations with Leopold's Congo began at the end of 1884 with congressional approval of Belgium's claim to the Congo and President Chester A. Arthur's recognition of the International Association of the Congo. The move, orchestrated by Henry S. Sanford, American minister to Belgium and ardent booster of Leopold, made America the first nation to recognize Leopold's authority in the Congo, even before the Berlin Congress of 1885. The first US representative to the Congo, Willard P. Tiedel, was appointed ‘non-resident commercial agent’ in April of 1884. His reports on prospects for American commerce were not encouraging. The following year, Lt Taunt was selected by his father-in-law, Admiral English, to survey the lower Congo. Taunt ascended the river from the then capital Boma to Stanley Pool, and then up to Stanley Falls. His report on conditions in the region and his assessment of prospects for American commerce were as negative as Tiedel's.

Taunt capitalized on his experience on the Congo naval trip to earn appointment as the head of Sanford's commercial company, the Sanford Exploring Expedition. On absence from the Navy, he organized the company's operations in the Congo, mainly gathering ivory tusks. He returned to the Navy but was soon court martialed for absence without leave and drunkenness. Just before being sentenced, he was allowed to resign his commission. Citing his experiences in the Congo, he applied for the appointment as commercial agent and resident consul to the Congo Free State. With Sanford's backing, President Grover Cleveland appointed him in November 1888. Taunt's reports to the State Department described a well-organized operation but were not encouraging on prospects for American commerce. He came to his ‘dreadful’ death from a fever in January 1891. It was the publication of British Consul Roger Casement's indictment of the crimes of the Congo, along with other reports on the atrocities being committed there, that led to Leopold's forced sale of the Congo to the Belgian state in 1908. With this, the story of the book comes to an end.

In the Epilogue, Andrew Jampoler describes his own voyage downriver in an outboard skiff from Stanleyville, now Kisangani, to the mouth of the Congo, replicating Taunt's trips. Although he registered his trip with the State Department, he writes that he expected no help if he ran into trouble. He said the last time the United States rescued an American in danger was the 1804 (cited as 1904) rescue of Consul Perdicaris on the Barbary Coast. With his truncated timeline, Jampoler overlooks the United States-Belgian rescue operation of November 1964 in which Belgian paratroopers, flown in by United States C-130s, freed Belgian and American hostages held by the Simba rebels, including me and four staff members of the American consulate, an incident I relate in my 2002 book by the same publisher, Captive in the Congo: A Consul's Return to the Heart of Darkness (soon to be an e-book). In any event, Jampoler did make the trip safely to the Atlantic. He traces the almost complete decline of the economy and decay of the infrastructure along the lower Congo River. One of the most disheartening portions of the book is his description of Congolese workers showing up for work every day at the rail yards of a non-functioning railway, despite receiving no pay.

The book offers a well-researched look at United States relations with the Congo under Leopold II. In the ensuing fifty years after the end of the author's main story, the Belgians succeeded in establishing a modern functioning state; shortly after independence in 1960, in my view, there were reasonably good prospects for American business in the new state. In the year that followed the United States-Belgian paradrop rescue on Stanleyville, Central Intelligence Agency-backed mercenaries defeated the Simba rebels, then under the leadership of Laurent Kabila. This enabled General Joseph Mobutu to seize power, creating the new state of Zaire, which led to a rapid decline of the economy. Thirty years later, Rwandan troops deposed Mobutu and placed Kabila in power. When he was assassinated, his son, Joseph Kabila, took his place and is now the elected president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.