Paul Kagame is profiled in the latest book by author Stephen Kinzer. Kinzer will discuss A Thousand Hills as part of the African Studies Center Book Series.

Friday, October 3, 2008
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
10th floor
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Kinzer describes Kagame as one of the most successful revolutionaries of the modern era.  A Thousand Hills tells the dramatic story of how he seized power in Rwanda and led the country's astonishing recovery.

Kinzer tells Kagame's tumultuous life story, including his early fascination with Che Guevara and James Bond, his years as an intelligence agent, his training in Cuba and the United States, the dazzlingly original way he built his secret rebel army, his bloody rebellion, and his ambitions for Rwanda.  It is the adventure-filled tale of a visionary who won a war, stopped a genocide, and then set out to turn his country into the star of Africa.

About Stephen Kinzer:

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents.  Kinzer was the Times bureau chief in Nicaragua, bureau chief in Bonn, after German unification became chief of the Berlin bureau, and bureau chief in Istanbul.  Kinzer is the author of Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua and Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.  Before joining the New York Times, Kinzer was a Latin America correspondent for the Boston Globe.  He was also a newspaper columnist and a state government official in Massachusetts.

Kinzer studied history at Boston University and graduated with high honors.  He now teaches journalism and political science at Northwestern University, contributes articles to the New York Review of Books and other periodicals, and writes a world affairs column for The Guardian.

Cost : Free and open to the public; pay-by-space and all-day ($9) parking available in lot 3.

www.international.ucla.edu/africa

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center