Of all the Western imperialists and their harsh colonial governments, none was as terrifying as King Leopold II of Belgium, and none was as brutal as his African colony, the so-called Congo Free State. In The King Incorporated, Neal Ascherson recounts King Leopold's exploitation of the Congolese -- he enslaved, tortured, terrorized, and eventually killed an estimated 20 million -- and his efforts to conceal these atrocities from the rest of the world.