Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya Caroline Elkins In this groundbreaking book, Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has recovered the lost history of the last days of British colonialism in Kenya. In the aftermath of World War II and the triumph of liberal democracy over fascism, the British detained and brutalized hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu - the colony's largest ethnic group - who had demanded their independence. In a compelling narrative that draws upon nearly a decade of painstaking research - including hundreds of interviews with Kikuyu detention camp survivors and their captors - Elkins reveals for the first time the complete story of the bloodiest period in the struggle for Kenyan independence. Imperial Reckoning is history of the highest order: meticulously researched, brilliantly written, and powerfully dramatic. A remarkable act of historical re-creation, it is also a disturbing reminder of the brutal imperial precedents that continue to inform Western nations in their drive to democratize the world. Caroline Elkins is the Hugo K. Forster Associate Professor of African Studies at Harvard University. Conversant in Swahili and some Kikuyu, she has spent nearly a decade traveling and working in rural Africa. She and her research were the subjects of a 2002 BBC documentary entitled Kenya: White Terror. This is her first book. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.