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The White Mans Burden
Brief Summary
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.
A professor of economics pens an informed and excoriating attack on the tragic waste, futility, and hubris of the West's efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world, and provides constructive suggestions on how to move forward. From one of the world as best-known development economists an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West as efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world in his previous book, "The Elusive Quest for Growth,"
William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. "The White Man’s Burden" is his widely anticipated counterpuncher brilliant and blistering indictment of the West as economic policies for the world as poor.
Sometimes angry, sometimes irreverent, but always clear-eyed and rigorous, Easterly argues that we in the West need to face our own history of ineptitude and draw the proper conclusions, especially at a time when the question of our ability to transplant Western institutions has become one of the most pressing issues we face.
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ISBN:9780143038825
Author:William Easterly
The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories
Brief summary
The Caine Prize for African Writing is Africa's leading literary prize. For fifteen years it has supported and promoted contemporary African writing. Keeping true to its motto, "Africa will always bring something new," the prize has helped launch the literary careers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Segun Afolabi, Leila Aboulela, Brian Chikwava, EC Osondu Henrietta Rose-Innes, Binyavanga Wainaina, and many others.
The 2014 collection includes the five shortlisted stories and the stories written at the Caine Prize Writers' Workshop. It will be published to coincide with the announcement of the award in July 2014.
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ISBN:9781780261744
Author:The Caine Prize for African Writing
Happiness Like Water
Brief summary
Here are Nigerian women at home and transplanted to the United States, building lives out of longing and hope, faith and doubt, the struggle to stay and the mandate to leave, the burden and strength of love. Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties.
Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, and folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait of Nigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch.
Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.
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ISBN:9780544003453
Author:Chinelo Okparanta
Africa A Biography of the Continent
Brief summary
In 1978, paleontologists in East Africa discovered the earliest evidence of our divergence from the apes: three pre-human footprints, striding away from a volcano, were preserved in the petrified surface of a mudpan over three million years ago.
Out of Africa, the world's most ancient and stable landmass, Homo sapiens dispersed across the globe. And yet the continent that gave birth to human history has long been woefully misunderstood and mistreated by the rest of the world.
In a book as splendid in its wealth of information as it is breathtaking in scope, British writer and photojournalist John Reader brings to light Africa's geology and evolution, the majestic array of its landforms and environments, the rich diversity of its peoples and their ways of life, the devastating legacies of slavery and colonialism as well as recent political troubles and triumphs. Written in simple, elegant prose and illustrated with Reader's own photographs, Africa: A Biography of the Continent is an unforgettable book that will delight the general reader and expert alike.
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ISBN:9780679738695
Author:John Reader
Do They Hear You When You Cry by Fauz...
For Fauziya Kassindja, an idyllic childhood in Togo, West Africa, sheltered from the tribal practices of polygamy and genital mutilation, ended with her beloved father's sudden death. Forced into an arranged marriage at age seventeen, Fauziya was told to prepare for kakia, the ritual also known as female genital mutilation. It is a ritual no woman can refuse. But Fauziya dared to try.
This is her story--told in her own words--of fleeing Africa just hours before the ritual kakia was to take place, of seeking asylum in America only to be locked up in U.S. prisons, and of meeting Layli Miller Bashir, a law student who became Fauziya's friend and advocate during her horrifying sixteen months behind bars.
Layli enlisted help from Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law and acting director of the American University International Human Rights Clinic. In addition to devoting her own considerable efforts to the case, Musalo assembled a team to fight with her on Fauziya's behalf. Ultimately, in a landmark decision in immigration history, Fauziya Kassindja was granted asylum on June 13, 1996. Do They Hear You When You Cry is her unforgettable chronicle of triumph.
Blood River
Brief summary
Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart.
A compulsively readable account of a journey to the Congo — a country virtually inaccessible to the outside world — vividly told by a daring and adventurous journalist.
Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomized the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition — but travelling alone.
Despite warnings Butcher spent years poring over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and venturing to the Congo’s eastern border. He passed through once thriving cities of this country and saw the marks left behind by years of abuse and misrule. Almost, 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the Atlantic Ocean, a thinner and a wiser man.
Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, vividly told in Blood River, is more remarkable still.
ISBN:9780099494287
Author:Tim Butcher
Wangari Maathai Mother of Trees by Ki...
Brief summary
This is an enchanting story of three children who find themselves in the Land of Trees, where they meet Mama Miti (Nobel Prize Winner Wangari Maathai).
Told in an entertaining way to appeal to young readers, the story is a must read for conservation enthusiasts.
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ISBN:2010133000412
Author:Kinyanjui Kombani
Guerrillas of Tsavo
Brief description
An Illustrated Diary of a Forgotten Campaign in East Africa 1914-1916 Guerrillas of Tsavo records the actions and tribulations of a British Empire army at war against an enterprising, adventurous enemy. Following the military operations, as well as the personal endeavors of the troops, porters and their followers, Guerrillas of Tsavo describes the first 22 months of the First World War in the Mombasa-Voi Command in British East Africa (Kenya).
The German Schutztruppe, under the leadership of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck - the only undefeated German general of the First World War, engaged a far larger Empire and Allied army and occupied the only British territory during the entire First World War - Taveta, Tsavo West National Park and down along the frontier to the Indian Ocean.
The Empire forces faced high rates of attrition, not from fighting but from the hostile environment of wild animals, snakes, heat, thirst, malnutrition, caused by long lines of communication, malaria and other tropical diseases. Guerrillas of Tsavo brings to light the extensive part played by East Africa, in particular the communities of Taveta, Tsavo and the south coast in shaping the course of Kenya’s history.
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ISBN:9789966757012
Author:James Willson
Moi at 90
Brief description
Moi at 90: H.E Daniel Arap Moi celebrates His Ninetieth birthday.
A couple of decades ago, a retired civil servant was a tired-looking and lethargic old man on a rocking chair, smoking an equally old pipe. The retirement age then was 55.
Mzee Moi defied that stereotype and broke the mould, which was a colonial psychological conspiracy to destroy or stifle the entrepreneurial spirit of retiring civil servants. It was meant to send them to an early grave and save the money meant for their pension.
Mzee Moi was elected the President of Kenya at the age of 54. During his 24 years, four months and eight days at the helm, he exhibited extremely high levels of energy. He was a veritable human dynamo with an encyclopedic mind.
ISBN:9789966074775
Author:Lee Njiru
Kagame The President of Rwanda Speaks
Brief summary
For many, Paul Kagame is the man who produced the Rwandan Miracle.
But this former refugee, now the president of a country that experienced the worse genocide in recent times, also has fierce enemies.
Twenty years after the genocide of Rwanda, Paul Kagame candidly reveals himself for the very first time.
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ISBN:9781936274772
Author:François Soudan
Walking the Nile by Levison Wood
His journey is 4,250 miles long.
He is walking every step of the way, camping in the wild, foraging for food, fending for himself against multiple dangers. He is passing through rainforest, savannah, swamp, desert and lush delta oasis.
He will cross seven, very different countries. No one has ever made this journey on foot.
In this detailed, thoughtful, inspiring and dramatic book, recounting Levison Wood's walk the length of the Nile, he will uncover the history of the Nile, yet through the people he meets and who will help him with his journey, he will come face to face with the great story of a modern Africa emerging out of the past.
Exploration and Africa are two of his great passions - they drive him on and motivate his inquisitiveness and resolution not to fail, yet the challenges of the terrain, the climate, the animals, the people and his own psychological resolution will throw at him are immense.
The dangers are very real, but so is the motivation for this ex-army officer. If he can overcome the mental and physical challenges, he will be walking into history.
Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You
Overview
Before that fateful April day, Jeanne lived the life of a typical Rwandan girl. She bickered with her little sister, went to school, and teased her brother. Then, in one horrifying night, everything changed. Political troubles unleashed a torrent of violence upon the Tutsi ethnic group. Jeanne's family, all Tutsis, fled their home and tried desperately to reach safety.
They did not succeed. As the only survivor of her family's massacre, Jeanne witnessed unspeakable acts. This haunting story was told to Jeanne's adoptive mother, and here she makes unforgettably real the events of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
ISBN:9781575059273
Author:Hanna Jansen
How to be both: A novel by Ali Smith
Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A true original, she is a one-of-a-kind literary sensation. Her novels consistently attract serious acclaim and discussion—and have won her a dedicated readership who are drawn again and again to the warmth, humanity and humor of her voice.
How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.
A note to the reader:
Who says stories reach everybody in the same order? This novel can be read in two ways and this book provides you with both. In half of all printed editions of the novel the narrative EYES comes before CAMERA. In the other half of printed editions the narrative CAMERA precedes EYES.
The narratives are exactly the same in both versions, just in a different order.
The books are intentionally printed in two different ways, so that readers can randomly have different experiences reading the same text. So, depending on which edition you happen to receive, the book will be: EYES, CAMERA, or CAMERA, EYES. Enjoy the adventure.
Gather Together in My Name
Overview
Maya Angelou's volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty.
As a black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In the sequel to her best-selling I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou is a young mother in California, unemployed, embarking on brief affairs and transient jobs in shops and night-clubs, turning to prostitution and the world of narcotics.
ISBN:9781844085026
Author:Maya Angelou
Amazing Peace A celebration
Overview
In this beautiful, deeply moving poem, Maya Angelou inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. "Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward,” she writes, "and speak the word aloud. Peace.”
Read by the poet at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House on December 1, 2005, Maya Angelou’s celebration of the "Glad Season” is a radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and a beautiful holiday gift for people of all faiths.
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ISBN:9781400065585
Author:Maya Angelou
The Timbuktu School for Nomads
Overview
The Timbuktu School for Nomads: Across the Sahara in the Shadow of Jihad.
The Sahara: a dream-like, far away landscape of Lawrence of Arabia and Wilfred Thesiger, The English Patient and Star Wars, and home to nomadic communities whose ways of life stretch back millennia.
Today it's a teeth-janglingly dangerous destination, where the threat of jihadists lurks just over the horizon. Following in the footsteps of 16th century traveller Leo Africanus, Nicholas Jubber went on a turbulent adventure to the forgotten places of North Africa and the legendary Timbuktu.
Once the seat of African civilization and home to the richest man who ever lived, this mythic city is now scarred by terrorist occupation and is so remote its own inhabitants hail you with the greeting, 'Welcome to the middle of nowhere'.
From the cattle markets of the Atlas, across the Western Sahara and up the Niger river, Nicholas joins the camps of the Tuareg, Fulani, Berbers, and other communities, to learn about their craft, their values and their place in the world.
The Timbuktu School for Nomads is a unique look at a resilient city and how the nomads pit ancient ways of life against the challenges of the 21st century.
ISBN:9781857886542
Author:Nicholas Jubber
Good Morning Mr Mandela A Memoir
Brief summary
Good Morning, Mr. Mandela tells the extraordinary story of how a young woman’s life, beliefs, prejudices—everything she once believed—were utterly transformed by the man she had been taught was the enemy.
It is the incredible journey of an awkward, terrified young secretary in her twenties who rose from a job in a government typing pool to become one of the president’s most loyal and devoted associates. During his presidency, she was one of his three private secretaries, and then became an aide-de-camp and spokesperson and managed his office in his retirement.
Working and traveling by his side for almost two decades, La Grange found herself negotiating with celebrities and world leaders, all in the cause of supporting and caring for Mr. Mandela in his many roles.
Here La Grange pays tribute to Nelson Mandela as she knew him—a teacher who gave her the most valuable lessons of her life. The Mr. Mandela we meet in these pages is a man who refused to be defined by his past, who forgave and respected all, but who was also frank, teasing, and direct. As he renewed his country, he also freed La Grange from a closed world of fear and mistrust, giving her life true meaning.
"I was fearful of so much twenty years ago—of life, of black people, of this black man and the future of South Africa—and I now was no longer persuaded or influenced by mainstream fears. He not only liberated the black man but the white man, too.”
This is a book about love and second chances that honors the lasting and inspiring gifts of one of the great men of our time. It offers a rare intimate portrait of Nelson Mandela and his remarkable life as well as moving proof of the power we all have to change.
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ISBN:9780525428282
Author:Zelda la Grange
Animals of the Masai Mara
Brief summary
One of the greatest attractions of a trip to Kenya is the chance to see animals such as lions, cheetah, leopards, zebra, and giraffe up close and in their natural habitats.
Animals of the Masai Mara is a lavish photographic guide that explores the charismatic wildlife most likely to be encountered by a safari visitor to the Masai Mara National Reserve in southwest Kenya.
More than 140 stunning photographs showcase 65 mammals and 17 reptile species, including 6 snakes. Designed to be informative and locally accurate, rather than purely identification-based, this easy-to-use book pays particular attention to wildlife behavior and is written from the firsthand experiences of the authors and the knowledge of local safari guides.
Numerous "Top Tips" throughout show readers how and where to locate specific species. The only field guide to focus solely on the wildlife of the Masai Mara National Reserve, Animals of the Masai Mara will be indispensable to visitors to this famous park and all nature enthusiasts with an interest in this area of the world.
• The only photographic guide specific to the animals of the Masai Mara National Reserve
• More than 140 remarkable photographs covering 65 mammals and 17 reptile species, including 6 snakes
• Accessible text explores animal behavior and other interesting facts
• A brief and informative introduction to the habitats of the Masai Mara
ISBN:9780691156019
Author:Adam Scott Kennedy and Vicki Kennedy
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Brief summary
William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger.
But William had read about windmills, and he dreamed of building one that would bring to his small village a set of luxuries that only 2 percent of Malawians could enjoy: electricity and running water.
His neighbors called him misala—crazy—but William refused to let go of his dreams. With a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks; some scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves; and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to forge an unlikely contraption and small miracle that would change the lives around him.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a remarkable true story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. It will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual's ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.
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ISBN:9780061730337
Author:William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer
A Gift of Love
Brief summary
A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings
The classic collection of sixteen sermons preached and compiled by Dr. King
As Dr. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best-known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962.
Having been arrested for holding a prayer vigil outside Albany City Hall, King and Ralph Abernathy shared a jail cell for fifteen days that was, according to King, ‘‘dirty, filthy, and ill-equipped’’ and "the worse I have ever seen.” While behind bars, he spent uninterrupted time preparing the drafts for classic sermons such as "Loving Your Enemies,” "Love in Action,” and "Shattered Dreams,” and continued to work on the volume after his release.
A Gift of Love includes these classic sermons, along with two new preachings. Collectively they present King’s fusion of Christian teachings and social consciousness, and promote his prescient vision of love as a social and political force for change.
ISBN:9780141985183
Author:Martin Luther King Jr.