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The Deserts of Africa
Brief Summary
Through his images of these vast, deceptively desolate stretches, geographer and photographer Michael Martin lays bare the cultural and spiritual core of Africa. His travels across the Sahara, the Kalahari, the Namib, and the volcanic wastelands of the Rift Valley have also acquainted him with the diverse desert residents who eke out an existence in these harsh, parched regions.
In The Deserts of Africa, Martin discovers the last functioning salt caravan on the Sahara, the Tarhalamt, which begins its journey after the rainy season. The Madugu leads the way without the aid of any visible landmarks, relying on the position of the sun, the structure of the sand, and the fast-fading traces of former caravans to drive his train of camels.
Martin also captures the character of these majestic, water-bearing beasts, without whom man would not survive in the arid areas. With Martin's intimate yet respectful perspective, The Deserts of Africa exposes the surprisingly fertile soul of some of the most barren landscapes on Earth.
ISBN:9781860467981
Author:Michael Martin
Stars of Big Cat Diary
Brief Summary
Big Cat Diary is a television phenomenon. From its inception in 1996 it grew steadily in popularity, until it attracted audiences of up to seven million.
In autumn 2008, in the BBC Natural History Unit’s most ambitious outside broadcast ever, it went live for the first time and recorded two million visitors to its website in the course of transmission.
ISBN:9781901268423
Author:Jonathan Scott and Angela Scott
Inside Sahara
Brief Summary
In the spring of 2001, photographer Basil Pao accompanied actor (and former Monty Python member) Michael Palin and a BBC film crew into the heart of the world's largest desert--the Sahara. The result of that journey is these remarkable pictures of landscapes and people, taken on a route that covered nine countries and an astonishing variety of cultures.
Even when in some of the most hostile conditions known to man, Pao succeeds in capturing the awe-inspiring beauty of the region. Here is Tangier, known for its incredible light; scenic old towns, such as Chefchouen in the Jabala Mountains, barely changed since the 15th century; men, working in tanneries, their bodies balanced over gigantic holes filled with dye; an oil refinery aflame; the River Niger bathed in a golden glow; the beautiful faces of pastoral nomads; the magnificent glory of endless sand dunes; and other unforgettable pictures. "Plus: behind the scene photos of Michael Palin and the film crew.
ISBN:9780297843047
Author:Basil Pao and Michael Palin
Botswana The Safari Guide
Brief Summary
A safari in northern Botswana takes the traveler to a wilderness populated almost exclusively by wildlife. Here are the predators and their prey; here, too, are the elephants, the hippos and the astonishing birdlife of the Okavango Delta.
This third edition of Bradt's Botswana Safari Guide: Okavango, Kalahari, Chobe Desert provides unrivalled coverage of the region's wildlife, environment and history, as well as a thorough evaluation of when, where and how to go.
Accommodation options for all budgets - from lodges to camps and hotels - are fully revised and updated Chris McIntyre is a director of a UK travel company specializing in southern Africa. He travels regularly throughout the region, including extended trips to Botswana.
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ISBN:9781841623085
Author:Chris Mcintyre
African Art Skira
Brief Summary
The Traditional Art volume presents a panorama of 6,000 years in the history of African art by highlighting archetypal and iconic works from various regions and important historic periods-400 objects beautifully reproduced in full color.
This immense artistic and historic fresco highlights the beauty and force of these works from regions now comprising Nigeria, Benin, the Congo, Gabon, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Mali, and Sudan.
The book also examines the influence of African art on 20th-century Western masters such as Picasso, Modigliani, and Brancusi.
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ISBN:9788857208695
Author:Ezio Bassani
The Tribal Arts of Africa
Brief Summary
This work displays and defines the fruits of thousands of years of black African creative endeavor.
All the objects included were made by Africans for their own use, spanning a period from the beginning of the first millennium to the early 20th century, before the commercial production of art aimed at the tourist trade.
ISBN:9780500282311
Author:Jean-Baptiste Bacquart
Scribbling the Cat
Brief Summary
When Alexandra Bo Fuller was in Zambia a few years ago visiting her parents, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known as being a tough bugger. Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him: Curiosity scribbled the cat, he told her.
Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian War.
A man of contradictions, K is battle-scarred and work-weathered, a born-again Christian and given to weeping for the failure of his romantic life and the burden of his memories. Driven by K's these memories of the war, they decide to enter the heart of darkness in the most literal way, by travelling from Zambia through Zimbabwe and Mozambique to visit the scenes of the war and to meet other veterans. The result is a remarkably unbiased and unsentimental glimpse of life in Africa.
ISBN:9780330433990
Author:Alexandra Fuller
Masai Dreaming
Brief Summary
'A provocative novel about a disillusioned writer who travels to Africa to research a screenplay. Cartwright tellingly contrasts the supposed savagery of the dark continent with the very real barbarism of Nazi Germany and the modern world' Esquire
'Ambitious ... the book works well, as a story, as a compendium of reflections on race and nationhood and as a novel with a refined and distinctive narrative voice and one marvelously complete character, the old White Kenyan, Tom Fairfax ... an elegantly complex, unfailingly intelligent novel'
Lucy Hughes-Hallett, the Spectator
ISBN:9780340768365
Author:Justin Cartwright
Nkrumah and Ghana
Brief Summary
This study of Nkrumah provides a compelling account of one of the most significant politicians in post-colonial Africa. Hadjor argues that although Nkrumah’s experiment failed, it continues to have relevance for Africa today. He also illustrates how certain mistakes were unavoidable during Nkrumah’s time. He writes of the clarity of Nkrumah’s vision, which helps to throw light on the problems many Africans face today. In this important way, Hadjor’s reworking of the essential themes of Nkrumah’s presidency contributes to the debate on the political future of Africa and promises to give focus to the recent revival of interest in Nkrumah.
From the Author’s Conclusion:
Nkrumah...always managed to stay ahead of his time. If anything, his greatest tragedy was the fact that he was so much ahead of those around him. Very few were able to follow the implications of Nkrumah’s perspective. Even those who were often inspired by his vision could not, on their own, follow on the right road.
Nkrumah’s legacy of thought retains its vitality precisely because it is the intellectual product of Africa’s historical experience. With Nkrumah, ideas point the way to action and develop further through action. It is this dialectic between ideas and action that made Nkrumah such a sensitive tribune of the people. He captured the mood and aspirations of his people and translated them into a universal message for Africa and for black people everywhere. That is why African Americans can so readily identify with the perspective outlined by him.
Nkrumah requires not adulation but consideration. All Africans owe a debt of gratitude to his liberating vision. The best way to repay the debt is for a new generation of Africans to learn for themselves the value of study and political education. Africans need not only to share his dream, but also to share his determination to build a new Africa.
ISBN:9781592210367
Author:Kofi Buenkor Hadjor
Never Look an American in the Eye
Brief Summary
Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American
Okey Ndibe’s memoir tells of his move from Nigeria to America, where he came to edit the influential—but forever teetering on the verge of insolvency—African Commentary magazine.
It recounts stories of Ndibe’s relationships with Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and other literary figures; examines the differences between Nigerian and American etiquette and politics; recalls an incident of racial profiling just 13 days after he arrived in the US, in which he was mistaken for a bank robber; considers American stereotypes about Africa (and vice-versa); and juxtaposes African folk tales with Wall Street trickery.
ISBN:9781616957612
Author:Okey Ndibe
Saving Safa Rescuing a Little Girl fr...
Waris Dirie, the Somalia nomad who became a supermodel, and an anti-FGM activist, first came to the world's attention with the publication of her autobiography, Desert Flower. The book was subsequently made into a film and little Safa Nour, from one of the slums of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, was chosen to play the young Waris.
The book and the film record many extraordinary things - from facing down a tiger, to being discovered by a famous photographer in London - but it also tells the grim story of female circumcision, an ordeal that the young Waris had to endure.
Saving Safa opens with a letter from Safa, now aged seven, who explains that she is worried that she will undergo FGM in spite of the contract her parents have signed with Dirie's Desert Flower Foundation stating that they will never have their daughter cut. Waris drops everything and flies to Djibouti where she meets Safa's father and mother who thinks her daughter should be cut to stop the community ostracising them. Waris brings them to Paris and to Vienna, they learn about the foundation and Safa's father finally comes round to the idea of working for the foundation as well.
As Safa was saved from FGM through a contract with her parents, the Foundation believes a thousand other girls can be saved through providing their families with aid in return for a promise not to mutilate their daughters.
Beauty of Maasai Mara
Brief Summary
Trim, travel-sized edition: clear text supported by superb photographs that effortlessly depict the magnificence of the Mara. A fascinating history of the Mara region and the founding of the Maasai Mara Game Reserve.
An intriguing insight into the Maasai people —their history, culture and mindset. Everything you need to know about the wildlife of the Mara — distribution, feeding habits, physical appearance, other peculiarities and distinguishing features.
ISBN:9781874041085
Author:David Round
Safe House: Explorations in
Brief Summary
Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.
A Ghanaian explores the increasing influence of China across the region, a Kenyan student activist writes of exile in Kampala, a Liberian scientist shares her diary of the Ebola crisis; a Nigerian journalist travels to the north to meet a community at risk, a Kenyan travels to Senegal to interview a gay rights activist and a South African writer recounts a tale of family discord and murder in a remote seaside town.
With an introductory essay by Ellah Allfrey, this anthology gathers new stories of contemporary Africa.
ISBN:9781911115168
Author:Ellah Wakatama Allfrey
S Is for Samora
Brief Summary
S Is for Samora: A Lexical Biography of Samora Machel and the Mozambican Dream.
Samora Machel led FRELIMO, the Mozambican Liberation Front, to victory against Portuguese colonialism in 1974, and the following year became independent Mozambique's first President. He died eleven years later in a mysterious plane crash.
Drawing on stories, speeches, documents, and the memories of those who knew him, this biography presents the many different faces of the man Nelson Mandela called "a true African revolutionary." Machel was a trained nurse who became a consummate military strategist, a farmer's son with the diplomatic skills first to tread the tightrope between China and the Soviet Union and then to charm Margaret Thatcher, a man of the people who found himself utterly alone, a dedicated seeker of peace who never saw anything but war.
The book examines the discourse of equality, liberty and comradeship that flourished during the 1960s and 1970s in the liberation struggles of the countries of southern Africa, in the face of the dominant rhetoric of the cold war. It meditates on the different languages through which the Mozambican dream was articulated: the linguistic currencies of anti-colonialism, of anti-racism, and of Marxism-Leninism, while exploring the gaps between then and now, between Mozambicans and the western idealists who wanted to be part of their new society, and between the polyglottal Mozambicans themselves.
ISBN:9781849041942
Author:Sarah Lefanu
Sugar Street
Brief Summary
Sugar Street is the third and concluding volume of the celebrated Cairo Trilogy, which brings the story of Al-Sayid Ahmad and his family up to the middle of the twentieth century.
Aging and ill, the family patriarch surveys the world from his housewares’ latticed balcony, as his long-suffering wife once did. While his children face middle age, it is through his grandsons that we see a modern Egypt emerging.
ISBN:9780552995825
Author:Naguib Mahfouz
Indian Africa: Minorities of Indian P...
Brief Summary
Indian Africa: Minorities of Indian-Pakistani Origin in Eastern Africa
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have minorities from the Indian sub-continent amongst their population. The East African Indians mostly reside in the main cities, particularly Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Kampala; they can also be found in smaller urban centers and in the remotest of rural townships.
They play a leading social and economic role as they work in business, manufacturing and the service industry, and make up a large proportion of the liberal professions. They are divided into multiple socio-religions communities, but united in a mutual feeling of meta-cultural identity. This book aims at painting a broad picture of the communities of Indian origin in East Africa, striving to include changes that have occurred since the end of the 1980s.
The different contributions explore questions of race and citizenship, national loyalties and cosmopolitan identities, local attachment and transnational networks. Drawing upon anthropology, history, sociology and demography, Indian Africa depicts a multifaceted population and analyses how the past and the present shape their sense of belonging, their relations with others, their professional and political engagement.
This book is a must-read for contemporary researchers, students, policy practitioners as well as the general reader.
ISBN:9789987082971
Author:Michel Adam
Strength In What Remains
Brief Summary
In Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder gives us the story of one man’s inspiring American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him, providing brilliant testament to the power of second chances. Deo arrives in the United States from Burundi in search of a new life.
Having survived a civil war and genocide, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores.
Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life and shows us what it means to be fully human.
ISBN:9780812977615
Author:Tracy Kidder
After Mandela
Brief Summary
After Mandela: The Battle for the Soul of South Africa
The definitive book on post-apartheid South Africa from an award-winning journalist.
When Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress declared victory over the bitter injustice of apartheid, some thought South Africa's future was assured. But despite Mandela's mission of reconciliation, rampant inequality remains; race relations are uneasy, violence is endemic and many in the ANC appear to have lost sight of the liberation ideals. With the election in 2009 of Jacob Zuma, a charismatic populist embroiled in scandal, uncertainty over the trajectory of the nation has only intensified.
South Africa now stands at a crossroads, and award-winning journalist Alec Russell draws on his deep knowledge of the country to tell us how it got there and to give us a compelling account, revised and updated for this edition, of the journey from Mandela to Zuma.
ISBN:9780099534020
Author:Alec Russell
The Weekenders
Brief Summary
The Weekenders: Travels in the Heart of Africa
What would happen if you took some of Britain's best writing talent, put them on a plane and flew them to one of the most extraordinary and inaccessible places on the planet?
What would happen if you took Irvine Welsh from the streets of Edinburgh and showed him a remote, dangerous village in Africa? Or if you flew Alex Garland into one of the world's most hazardous war zones?
And how would Tony Hawks react if you dragged him away from his tennis and asked him to write a song with a Sudanese tribesman? With Victoria Glendinning, Andrew O'Hagan, Giles Foden and WF Deedes, these writers have experienced for themselves one of the most beautiful and yet troubled lands in the world - Sudan.
This remarkable collection of short stories and evocative travel writing is their response - as diverse and unpredictable as the country itself.
ISBN:9780091881801
Author:W.F. Deedes,Sue Ryan,Alex Garland,Tony Hawks, Andrew O'Hagan,Irvine Welsh,Giles Foden and Victoria Glendinning
War and Conflict in Africa
Brief Summary
After the Cold War, Africa earned the dubious distinction of being the world's most bloody continent. But how can we explain this proliferation of armed conflicts? What caused them and what were their main characteristics? And what did the world's governments do to stop them?
In this fully revised and updated second edition of his popular text, Paul Williams offers an in-depth and wide-ranging assessment of more than six hundred armed conflicts which took place in Africa from 1990 to the present day - from the continental catastrophe in the Great Lakes region to the sprawling conflicts across the Sahel and the web of wars in the Horn of Africa.
Taking a broad comparative approach to examine the political contexts in which these wars occurred, he explores the major patterns of organized violence, the key ingredients that provoked them and the major international responses undertaken to deliver lasting peace.
Part I, Contexts provides an overview of the most important attempts to measure the number, scale and location of Africa's armed conflicts and provides a conceptual and political sketch of the terrain of struggle upon which these wars were waged.
Part II, Ingredients analyses the role of five widely debated features of Africa's wars: the dynamics of neo-patrimonial systems of governance; the construction and manipulation of ethnic identities; questions of sovereignty and self-determination; as well as the impact of natural resources and religion.
Part III, Responses, discusses four major international reactions to Africa's wars: attempts to build a new institutional architecture to help promote peace and security on the continent; this architecture's two main policy instruments, peacemaking initiatives and peace operations; and efforts to develop the continent.
War and Conflict in Africa will be essential reading for all students of international peace and security studies as well as Africa's international relations.
ISBN:9781509509058
Author:Paul D. Williams