The Hearts of Darkness: How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa is a 2003 non-fiction book by Milton Allimadi.

The book was first published in 2003 and a second 2016 edition added content about the role of NATO in the Second Libyan Civil War.

[1] The short book documents racism in the writing of authors, explorers, and aristocrats Samuel Baker, Joseph Conrad, Frederick Lugard, Charles Gordon, Keith Richburg, and Henry Morton Stanley.

[3] Specifically, it documents and critiques the widespread depictions, most by white writers, but also by Black writers, of barbarism, physical, moral and intellectual inferiority, denial of the positive contributions that Black people have made to culture, arts, science, and descriptions of Africa as inhospitable and uncivilized.

[4] Francis Kwarteng, writing in ModernGhana said that Allimadi "should be highly commended for a job well executed.