Idi Amin Book

Idi Amin
By Steve Doughety
128 pages
Nonfiction
Biography

Idi Amin, known to be one of the evilest and cruel leaders of all time, is generally not well known. Born in Uganda, he was a boxer and soldier under British rule of Uganda. He was known to be a vicious boxer who was merciless and relentless. Also in the military he became infamous for his own cruelty toward people. This man soon raised his ambitions and got to be a high ranking officer for the Ugandan military. Later on after the British left the Ugandans to govern themselves, the country was slowly declining and there were huge disputes between the prime minister and president. Soon the prime minister sided with Amin and overthrew the president and became both the prime minister and president of Uganda. The people of Uganda were not pleased and there were many problems that arose because of this. Soon the people were desperate for a new leader. And Amin was trying to become prime minister himself. So Amin made a smart plan to overthrow the prime minister, who trusted Amin. And Amin overthrew the prime minister and promised many great things to the Ugandans. So after he gained the trust of the people, everyone thought that the Ugandans were going to have a great country of peace and prosperity. IT was the complete opposite. Amin had secretly killed many people who opposed him, and nobody really found out until he killed to Americans. Then, many people have become suspicious because dead bodies were being found everywhere. Soon, Amin was killing many of his own fellow Ugandans with the use of his power. Amin was caught in a war with Tanzania, had ruined the economy, killed much of his own people, had ruled with an iron fist and was very secret about all this. But soon Tanzania overtook Uganda and Amin had fled to Saudi Arabia with lots of money. By then he had killed 500,000 Ugandans and brutally tortured even more. This was the true nature of Amin, who had put on a mask to cover all the evil inside him.

I thought that this book was very informational, even though it was a little short. It packed in all the important details about the terrible things Amin did in just around 100 pages. I really like how the author wrote the book too. This book showed the Amin had ruined the country of Uganda in great detail. After reading this book, I had made my mind about Amin and this book helped me realize that there are many evil people in this world, even though they might not be as well-known as Hitler or Stalin. But the bad part about this book was that it was WAY too short. Also this book had some parts where the author was quite biased and I could see that the author thought that Amin was evil. So in the end, I gave this book a 3/5.