Since the publication of the first edition in 1977, Africa has established itself as a leading resource for teaching, business, and scholarship. This fourth edition has been completely revised and focuses on the dynamism and diversity of contemporary Africa. The volume emphasizes contemporary culture-civil and social issues, art, religion, and the political scene-and provides an overview of significant themes that bear on Africa's place in the world. Historically grounded, Africa provides a comprehensive view of the ways that African women and men have constructed their lives and engaged in co... View More...
Thoroughly updated to reflect recent events and trends - including Africa and the war on terror, progress and problems in democratization, advances by women in politics, developments in the fight against AIDS, the growing influence of China, the establishment of the African Union, and much more - this new edition of Understanding Contemporary Africa treats the range of issues facing the continent in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The authors provide current, thorough analyses not only of history, politics, and economics, but also geography, environmental concerns, population shi... View More...
Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan and brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations. His investigation of conditions in Mauritania, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan, and India reveals the tragic emergence of a "new slavery," one intricately linked to the global economy. The new slaves are not a long-term investment as was true with older forms of slavery, explains Bales. Instead, the... View More...
This evocative book tells of the lives and experiences of 22 black South African womenall born in the 1900sfrom one small town in the Western Transvaal. The women seem both ordinary and remarkable as we follow their lives through childhood and schooling, work in the city, marriage and family life, participation in urban resistance, and ultimate return to Phokeng by the 1980s. This book's originality and power lies in the central place it gives to the oral histories on which it is based. This richly textured study gives us a uniquely qualitative insight into the lives and world views of black ... View More...
This book provides an account of actual African experience and African criticisms. It is designed to examine the actual viability of the World Bank's structural adjustment strategies for Africa, all of which were designed to encourage export-led growth. View More...
"Churchill's first major historical work is still considered one of his most riveting." -- Library Journal"It's a great read." -- The Washington ExaminerA story of heroism and glory that rivals any work of fiction, this instructive treatise on a Middle Eastern conflict was written by one of history's greatest figures. In The River War, Winston Churchill recounts a critical but often overlooked episode from the days when the British Empire was at the height of its power: the operations directed by Lord Kitchener of Khartoum on the Upper Nile from 1896 to 1899, which led to England's reconquest... View More...
An unflinching look at the events in Rwanda and the nature of genocide
The horrific slaughter in Rwanda has once again driven home the deeply rooted existence and continuing presence of genocidal impulses. In this passionately argued volume-first published to great acclaim in France and considerably updated during the translation process-a deeply involved witness of the massacres takes an unflinching look at recent events in Rwanda and what they can tell us about the nature of genocide. View More...
With words and images of extraordinary power and immediacy, photographer Gianni Giansanti takes the reader on a journey of discovery in a region of Africa that has remained untouched over the centuries, and illustrates the life and traditions of the people who live there. Remote Southern Ethiopia is an unspoiled region. View More...
The experiences of Africans in the Old World--the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, is followed by their movement into the New, where their plight in lands claimed by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English colonial powers is analyzed from enslavement through the Cold War. Particular attention is paid to the everyday lives of the working classes and their cultural development. Their exploits, challenges, and struggles are covered over a broad time frame that links as well as differentiates past and present circumstances. View More...
East Africa affects our imagination like few other places: The sight of a charging rhino goes directly to the heart; the limitless landscape of bony highlands, desert, and mountain is, as Isak Dinesen wrote, of unequalled nobility. White Hunters is the story of seventy years of African adventure, danger, and romance. It re-creates the legary big-game safaris led by Selous and Bell and the daring ventures of early hunters into unexplored territories, and brings to life such romantic figures as Cape-to-Cairo Grogan, who walked 4,000 miles for the love of a woman, and Dinesen's dashing lover, Den... View More...
Jewish Igbo scholar Remy Ilona presents and analyzes Judaic history, practices and concept within the Igbo culture of Nigeria. Remy has been honored and supported by Kulanu, an American Jewish organization that assists dispersed Jewish communities internationally. View More...
In South Africa's Brave New World, Johnson shows how Mandela's successors brought South Africa close to "failed state" status and explores the implications for its future. At the heart of the story lies the figure of Thabo Mbeki, whose presidency led to catastrophic failure on almost every front. With a new afterword that assesses the new administration of Jacob Zuma, this controversial book stands as the definitive history of the new South Africa View More...
In this study of Hutu refugees from Burundi, driven into exile in Tanzania after their 1972 insurrection against the dominant Tutsi was brutally quashed, Liisa Malkki shows how experiences of dispossession and violence are remembered and turned into narratives, and how this process helps to construct identities such as "Hutu" and "Tutsi." Through extensive fieldwork in two refugee communities, Malkki finds that the refugees' current circumstances significantly influence these constructions. Those living in organized camps created an elaborate "mythico-history" of the Hutu people, which gave s... View More...
"Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand history - and then go out and change it." -President Barack Obama Nelson Mandela was one of the great moral and political leaders of his time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. After his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela was at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head ... View More...
Emma Mashinini was Secretary of one of South Africa's biggest trade unions when she was arrested without charge and detained for six months, often in solitary confinement. This powerful and compelling autobiography of Mashinini relates the moving story of her life under apartheid from her childhood in Sophiatown, her first marriage and divorce, motherhood, and her work in a textile factory that eventually lead her to the trade union. View More...
Tells the personal stories of the author's grandmother, mother and sister, and how they faced desperate and dire circumstances to survive and raise their families. The book also shows how their lives were caught up in the events of South Africa, yet also involved problems specific to women. View More...
The classic story of life in Apartheid South Africa. Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university. This extraordinary memoir of life under aparth... View More...