Prize-winning author Adam Hochschild to speak March 9

Adam Hochschild, author of the new book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves will give a talk about his book on Wednesday, March 9, at 3:30 p.m. in the Cowell Conference Room.

Adam Hochschild Photo: Mikhail Lemkhin

Bury the Chains begins in 1787 when a group of men gathered in a London printing shop and launched the 50-year campaign to end the British slave trade. Throughout the book Hochschild draws incisive portraits of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement and those who were against them.

Hochschild's 1998 book, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, won the California Book Awards gold medal for nonfiction, the Duff Cooper prize, and the Lionel Gelber prize, and it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hochschild's other books include Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son (1996); The Unquiet Ghost : Russians Remember Stalin (1994); and The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey (1990).

Hochschild has also written for the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, New York Review of Books, New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones (which he cofounded), the Nation, and many other magazines and newspapers. A former commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, he teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

The talk, which is sponsored by the Center for World History, is open to the university community. Hochschild will be signing copies of his book at the Capitola Book Café later the same evening.

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