The Wonga Coup
Guns, Thugs, and the Steely Determination to Create Mayhem
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
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By:
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Adam Roberts
About this listen
In The Dogs of War, Frederick Forsyth effectively described an attempt by mercenaries to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in 1972. And the chain of events surrounding the night of March 7, 2004, is a rare case of life imitating art or, at least, life imitating a 1970s thriller in almost uncanny detail. With a cast of characters worthy of a remake of Wild Geese and a plot as mazy as it was unlikely, The Wonga Coup is a tale of venality, overarching vanity, and greed, whose example speaks to the problems of the entire African continent.
©2006 Adam Roberts (P)2006 Tantor Media, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread.
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Contains much old material from "Looming Tower"
- By peter on 09-21-16
By: Lawrence Wright
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Havana Nocturne
- How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost It to the Revolution
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Havana Nocturne takes listeners back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Thanks to strong ties with the island's brutal dictator, President Batista, the mob soon owned the biggest luxury hotels and casinos and launched an unprecedented tourist boom. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others.
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Not for reactionaries
- By sunsolid on 02-17-09
By: T. J. English
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Nemesis
- One Man and the Battle for Rio
- By: Misha Glenny
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Nemesis is the story of an ordinary man who became the king of the largest slum in Rio, the head of a drug cartel, and perhaps Brazil's most wanted criminal. It's a gripping tale of gold hunters and evangelical pastors, bent police and rich-kid addicts, quixotic politicians and drug lords with math degrees. Traversing through rain forests and high-security prisons, filthy slums and glittering shopping malls, this is also the story of how change came to Brazil.
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Amazing sobriety
- By Fabio Azeredo on 04-29-16
By: Misha Glenny
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War Dogs
- How Three Stoners From Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History
- By: Guy Lawson
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In January 2007 two young stoners from Miami Beach - one a ninth-grade dropout, the other a licensed masseur - won a $300 million Department of Defense contract to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. Incredibly, instead of fulfilling the order with high-quality arms, Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz - the dudes - bought cheap Communist-style surplus ammunition from Balkan gunrunners.
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What is with those accents?
- By Reader808 on 08-22-16
By: Guy Lawson
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Missing Man
- The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran
- By: Barry Meier
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 2013, Americans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in 2007 was there on a mission for the CIA. The missing man, Robert Levinson, appeared in pictures dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner and pleaded in a video for help from the United States.
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Important story
- By Richard F. Callahan on 08-03-16
By: Barry Meier
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The Art of Betrayal
- The Secret History of MI6 - Life and Death in the British Secret Service
- By: Gordon Corera
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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From Berlin to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the stories of the agents on the front lines of British intelligence. And the truth is often more remarkable than fiction.
MI6 has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.
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Good details but lacks thorough research
- By Unapologetic on 09-06-17
By: Gordon Corera
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Operation Shakespeare
- The True Story of an Elite International Sting
- By: John Shiffman
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Operation Shakespeare, investigative journalist John Shiffman traces a high-risk undercover operation launched by an elite undercover Homeland Security unit created to stop the Iranians, Russians, Chinese, Pakistanis, and North Koreans from acquiring sophisticated American-made electronics capable of guiding missiles, jamming radar, and triggering countless weapons - from wireless IEDs to nuclear bombs.
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under our noses
- By Andy on 08-20-14
By: John Shiffman
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The Skies Belong to Us
- Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking
- By: Brendan I. Koerner
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl, Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow commandeered Western Airlines Flight 701 as a vague protest against the war. Through a combination of savvy and dumb luck, the couple managed to flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom, a feat that made them notorious around the globe. Koerner spent four years chronicling this madcap tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers, to African despots, to French movie stars.
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A very entertaining and engaging audiobook
- By S. Perry on 07-13-13
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Red Heat
- Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean
- By: Alex von Tunzelmann
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Caribbean crises of the Cold War are revealed as never before in this riveting story of clashing ideologies, the rise of the politics of fear, the machinations of superpowers, and the daring of the brazen mavericks who took them on. The superpowers thought they could use Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as puppets, but what neither bargained on was that their puppets would come to life.
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Interesting, not extraordinary.
- By History on 10-24-11
What listeners say about The Wonga Coup
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John Robert BEHRMAN
- 03-02-09
Awesome!
This book is fascinating from the start - as much or more for simple fun than intellectual appreciation. The book is written in an elegant, engaging, and subtly funny style, and the reader is a pleasure.
The content of the book is very good. He convincingly portrays mercernaries, plotters, and the various things that go into a coup and how they can go wrong. He's very descriptive of the decision making, and gives good reasons why they made these decisions and how they got the results they did.
He doesn't spend any time critiquing the coup, and he is remarkably uneditorial about the whole thing. I felt that I could understand and sympathize with all the plotters. If you want more abstract details and overarching commentary, read Luttwak's coup de 'etat. This is well written as an engaging an immersing story of how some folks might get the notion that a coup is a bright idea.
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- Rick
- 10-17-21
The Dogs of War II
When I was young, I saw the movie Dog’s of War and liked it so much I read the book and liked it even more. I may be able to trace my lifelong interest in the politics and history of Africa to that experience. Equatorial Guinea may be a tiny remote little-known nation, but its history has been one of the saddest of any nation. Terrible leadership throughout its entire existence has made it a literal hellish place for the average member of the population. The discovery of oil offshore has not improved the lot of most of its citizens, but only left them worse off as the elites of the world and the small nation conspire to enrich themselves and none of the benefits trickle down. One brutal, venal family has run the country its entire existence and the next generation that will someday take over sounds little better than the insane first leader and the brutal, corrupt current leader. The Dogs of War and the Wonga Coup detail two attempts by mercenary groups to take over the country. The first book was a novel based on actual event the author plays a still uncertain role in (a topic much discussed in the Wonga Coup) and The Wonga Coup is non-fiction treatment of another attempted invasion 30 years after the Dogs of War events. Neither real life coup succeeded. That may be unfortunate in the first case as nothing could be worse than President Macias. The outcome of the Wonga Coup if it had worked is more debatable as the whole action was badly run from the beginning and was based on trying to gain control of the oil revenues and not to eliminate a mad leader who created the “Dachau of Africa.” Either way you end up with corrupt self-serving elites in control, but the Wonga group may have been less brutal. The book is a fascinating look into he Workings of mercenaries and how to not pull off a successful coup. The author lays out good overview of all the things the plotters had in their favor and how they messed up. The son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher comes off especially badly. Secrecy is key to success of a coup and bringing in the spoiled attention seeking and entitled son of someone rich and powerful was a big mistake.
Simon Vance always does a nice job reading books and this is no exception,
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- Y. Harrington
- 11-13-18
Wow what a doosey of a coup!
While working in Iraq for a private security company I met more than a few South Africans. One, told me about the book. He was mentioned in the book. He was one of the lucky ones. This is truly an amazing book. I highly recommend it.
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- PearlGirl
- 11-05-06
Dictators and dogs of war, beware
Today, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging. He was once our "friend." Then he defied us and we invaded. His eventual trial and sentence were inevitable. As long as Obiang plays ball with the US (and the oil companies), he'll be our friend. If he were to ever defy us, he'd better watch out.
This book was a great follow-up to the stories reported previously in the media. I wanted to know more about what really happened in such an innocuous country and how certain prominent characters became involved. This story starts out as a comedy and quickly turns into a tragedy. I was torn between the plotters getting what they deserved versus maybe, just maybe, those involved might get off with more lenient terms. I thought the reader was good, not overplaying the accents and keeping them understandable. If you are a news junkie who would like to know the back story that led to someone finally taking action and the aftermath, I highly recommend this book.
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7 people found this helpful