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Malcolm X by Manning Marable
Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.
Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties.
Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
In the House of the Interpreter by Ng...
Renowned novelist, poet, playwright, and literary critic Ngugi wa Thiong’o was a student at a prestigious, British-run boarding school near Nairobi when the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty gripped his country.
While he enjoyed scouting trips and chess tournaments, his family home was razed to the ground and his brother, a member of the insurgency, was captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. But Ngugi could not escape history, and eventually found himself jailed after a run in with the forces of colonialism.
Ngugi richly and poignantly evokes the experiences that would transform him into a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass to us all. A winning celebration of the implacable determination of youth and the power of hope, here is a searing account of the history of a man—and the story of a nation.
Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta
Green Hills of Africa
Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December 1933.
Hemingway's well-known interest in - and fascination with - big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip.
It is an examination of the lure of the hunt and an impassioned portrait of the glory of the African landscape and of the beauty of a wilderness that was, even then, being threatened by the incursions of man.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Ernest Hemingway
Al-Shabaab in Somalia
Since early 2007 a new breed of combatants has appeared on the streets of Mogadishu and other towns in Somalia: the 'Shabaab', or youth, the only self-proclaimed branch of al-Qaeda to have gained acceptance (and praise) from Ayman al-Zawahiri and 'AQ centre' in Afghanistan. Itself an offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union, which split in 2006, Shabaab has imposed Sharia law and is also heavily influenced by local clan structures within Somalia itself.
It remains an infamous and widely discussed, yet little-researched and understood, Islamist group. Hansen's remarkable book attempts to go beyond the media headlines and simplistic analyses based on alarmist or localist narratives and, by employing intensive field research conducted within Somalia, as well as on the ground interviews with Shabaab leaders themselves, explores the history of a remarkable organisation, one that has survived predictions of its collapse on several occasions. Hansen portrays al-Shabaab as a hybrid Islamist organization that combines a strong streak of Somali nationalism with the rhetorical obligations of international jihadism, thereby attracting a not insignificant number of foreign fighters to its ranks. Both these strands of Shabaab have been inadvertently boosted by Ethiopian, American and African Union attempts to defeat it militarily, all of which have come to nought.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Stig Jarle Hansen
Shaka the Great
1826: Shaka, king of the Zulus, has consolidated his power and is ready to move against those who continue to resist his authority. But now a new tribe has appeared - white men from across the Great Water - claiming they wish to trade with Shaka.
These white men may seem puny, and their ways strange, but Shaka believes there's more to them than meets the eye. Obsessed with divining their secrets, however, he becomes oblivious to the threat growing from within his own court.
As the king grows increasingly obsessed with these outsiders, he becomes oblivious to the threat growing from within his own court. Only Shaka's loyal captain and his young sidekick can thwart this conspiracy. But to succeed, their wits will need to be as sharp as their enemies' knives.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Walton Golightly
Doing business in Kenya
The Seeds of Greatness
In one sense, this book is a great inspiration that will provoke even a reader with modest ambitions in life to aim at greatness. In another sense, it is a guide to greatness that describes the tools that you need to succed in whatever you desire in life.
Above all, it is a resource book and a compass that will show you the path that almost all great men and women have followed to achieve greatness.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Murori Kiunga
Links by Nuruddin Farah
Gripping, provocative, and revelatory, Links is a novel that will stand as a classic of modern world literature. Jeebleh is returning to Mogadiscio, Somalia, for the first time in twenty years. But this is not a nostalgia trip—his last residence there was a jail cell.
And who could feel nostalgic for a city like this? U.S. troops have come and gone, and the decimated city is ruled by clan warlords and patrolled by qaat-chewing gangs who shoot civilians to relieve their adolescent boredom.
Diverted in his pilgrimage to visit his mother’s grave, Jeebleh is asked to investigate the abduction of the young daughter of one of his closest friend’s family. But he learns quickly that any act in this city, particularly an act of justice, is much more complicated than he might have imagined.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Nuruddin Farah
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Mea...
A new kind of war requires a new kind of war story. This scorching, devastatingly honest memoir is a first-of-its-kind confession of love, friendship, and betrayal of ideals from civilians who volunteered to be on the front lines.
In the early 1990s, three young people attracted to UN peacekeeping for very different reasons cross paths in Cambodia. Heidi, a new York social worker on the run from a marriage gone bust, is looking for an adventure. Andrew is a young doctor seeking to save lives. Ken is fresh from Harvard Law and full of idealism.
The UN organizes Cambodia's first democratic elections, and Phnom Penh is the scene of wild parties, as the international community celebrates the end of the Cold War. There the three become friends for life.
Propelled by success in Cambodia, the US and UN sponsor peacekeeping missions to Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Ken and Heidi find themselves together in Somalia. They dance on their rooftop to Jimi Hendrix while helicopters buzz overhead so close they feel the heat of the exhaust. "You're listening to 99.9 FM MogadishuRockin' the Dish," American Armed Forces Radio announces, "Keep your head down and the volume up."
But after the infamous Black Hawk Down incident when eighteen US Army Rangers were killed in a firefight with Somali militias, a chain reaction of violence breaks loose. As the trio's missions unravel, their bond tightens. Andrew is sent to Haiti, to Bosnia, and then Rwanda where he finds Ken, investigating the mass grave of genocide. Heidi's journey is unforgettablea rare woman in a man's world of conflict and war.
The three friends' voices mingle to paint an indelible picture'suffused with tenderness and unexpected humorof life, love, and death in the world's most dangerous places. By day they struggle to bring order out of chaos; by night they use revelry, sex, each otherdesperate measures from faith to flesh and everything in betweento find a human connection in a terrifying world. Graphic, lyrical, and astonishingly urgent, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures is a celebration of the strength of the human spiritand of the gritty power of friendship to keep you alive.
Desert Children by Waris Dirie
U.N. Special Ambassador Waris Dirie was born to a family of tribal nomads in Somalia. She told her story—enduring female circumcision, fleeing through the desert, and, improbably, becoming a top model—in her first book, Desert Flower.
In Desert Dawn, she wrote about her return to Somalia and her work as a U.N. Special Ambassador against FGM (female genital mutilation).
Her latest book recounts her investigations into the practice of FGM in Europe—it is estimated that as many as 500,000 women and girls have undergone FGM or are at risk. Here are the voices of women who have felt emboldened by Waris Dirie’s courage.
Nomad
Ayaan Hirsi Ali captured the world’s attention with Infidel, her compelling coming-of-age memoir, which spent thirty-one weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, in Nomad, Hirsi Ali tells of coming to America to build a new life, an ocean away from the death threats made to her by European Islamists, the strife she witnessed, and the inner conflict she suffered.
It is the story of her physical journey to freedom and, more crucially, her emotional journey to freedom—her transition from a tribal mind-set that restricts women’s every thought and action to a life as a free and equal citizen in an open society. Through stories of the challenges she has faced, she shows the difficulty of reconciling the contradictions of Islam with Western values.
In these pages Hirsi Ali recounts the many turns her life took after she broke with her family, and how she struggled to throw off restrictive superstitions and misconceptions that initially hobbled her ability to assimilate into Western society. She writes movingly of her reconciliation, on his deathbed, with her devout father, who had disowned her when she renounced Islam after 9/11, as well as with her mother and cousins in Somalia and in Europe.
Nomad is a portrait of a family torn apart by the clash of civilizations. But it is also a touching, uplifting, and often funny account of one woman’s discovery of today’s America. While Hirsi Ali loves much of what she encounters, she fears we are repeating the European mistake of underestimating radical Islam. She calls on key institutions of the West—including universities, the feminist movement, and the Christian churches—to enact specific, innovative remedies that would help other Muslim immigrants to overcome the challenges she has experienced and to resist the fatal allure of fundamentalism and terrorism.
This is Hirsi Ali’s intellectual coming-of-age, a memoir that conveys her philosophy as well as her experiences, and that also conveys an urgent message and mission—to inform the West of the extent of the threat from Islam, both from outside and from within our open societies. A celebration of free speech and democracy, Nomad is an important contribution to the history of ideas, but above all a rousing call to action.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Gifts By Nuruddin Farah
In Gifts, the second volume in Farah's Blood in the Sun trilogy (see Maps, above), the same forces of war and unrest in Somalia shape the life of Duniya, a widowed nurse with three children trying to juggle a career and the emotional needs of a mature woman in the big city.
Nearing 35 years of age, she is pitied by her fellow nurses as a woman whose happiest years have already passed her by.
As Duniya recalls the dearth of choices in a rigid patriarchal society, she tells how her dying father asked his friend, Zubair, to marry his young daughter and how she was unable to refuse the old blind man, who would sire her twins before dying.
Over the course of Duniya's many adventures, her sanity is buttressed by her loyal friend, Bosaaso, a widower Duniya meets at the hospital.
The solidity and sincerity of their unlikely relationship counteracts the pain and confusion caused by the series of mishaps that befall the resilient Duniya, who represents, in her strength and courage, the kind of women who enable Somalia to survive its darkest moments.
In Gifts, as in Maps, Farah presents a remarkable portrait of unquenchable humanity in a beleaguered people. Reading both these distinctive, significant books will whet the reader's appetite for Farah's powerful early works.
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ISBN:2147483647
Author:Nuruddin Farah
Desert Dawn by Waris Dirie
Fashion model, UN ambassador, and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie is a remarkable woman. Born into a family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia, she told her story in the worldwide bestseller Desert Flower: enduring female circumcision at the age of 5; running away through the desert at 12 to escape an arranged marriage; being discovered by photographer Terence Donovan as she worked as a cleaner in London; and becoming a top fashion model.
Although she fled Somalia, she never forgot the country or the family that shaped her. Desert Dawn is Waris Dirie’s profoundly moving account of her return to her homeland. As an international model, Waris Dirie was the face of Revlon.
In 1997, as part of its campaign to eliminate female genital mutilation, the United Nations appointed her Special Ambassador for Women’s Rights in Africa. She now lives in New York with her son.
Where Soldiers Fear to Tread
Brief Summary
Where Soldiers Fear to TreadJohn Burnett survived this ordeal and others during his service as a relief worker in Somalia. But many did not. In this gripping firsthand account, Burnett shares his experiences during the flood relief operations of 1997 to 1998. Ravaged by monsoons, starvation, and feuding warlords, Somalia continues to be one of the most dangerous places on earth. Both a personal story and a broader tale of war, the politics of aid, and the horrifying reality of child-soldiers, his chronicle represents the astonishing challenges faced by humanitarian workers across the globe. There are currently thousands of civilian workers serving in over one hundred nations. Today, they are as likely to be killed in the line of duty as are trained soldiers. In the past five years alone, more UN aid workers have been killed than peacekeepers. When Burnett joined the World Food Program, he was told their mission would be safe, their help welcomed–and they would be pulled out if bullets started to fly. When he arrived in Somalia, Burnett found a nation rent by a decade of anarchy, a people wary of foreign intervention, and a discomfiting uncertainty that the UN would remember he’d been sent there at all. From Burnett’s young Somali driver to the armed civilians, warlords, and colleagues he would never see again, this unforgettable memoir delves into the complexity of humanitarian missions and the wonder of everyday people who risk their lives to help others in places too dangerous to send soldiers.
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ISBN:2147483647
Author:John S. Burnett
Operation Linda Nchi
The book does not cover all aspects of Operational Art as pertains to Operation "Linda Nchi" [ swahili for safeguard or protect the Country ], as some of the details are still classified and the overall operation against Al Shabaab is still a work in progress., ie. it covers the Operational Art aspects of macroscopic maneuver, operational approach and operational objectives. But little information is revealed as pertains to Operational Logistics and the extent of disruption that is still required against Al Shabaab Operations in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
Indeed the foreward by His Excellency Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta, C.G.H, the President of the Republic of Kenya and Commander in Chief of the Kenya Defence Forces, appreciates the fact that the war against Al Shabaab is still ongoing – in other instances he has stated "...for as long as it takes....”
The book is described as the "idea” of the former Chief of Kenya Defence Forces (CDF), General (Dr.) Julius Karangi, who at the time of his active service felt that the campaign against Al Shabaab should be documented in form of a publicly available book.
This was a unique idea for an African Military Force at the present time, but there are significant past conflicts documented in books especially around the colonial era, struggles for independence and post-independence episodes of guerilla warfare. An example of past documentation and appreciation of history that is declining, is that in the 1950s to 1960s, students in Kenyan schools learnt about General Paul Emil von Lettow Voerbeck and "The Great War".
This is despite the fact that Kenya was a British colony. Given the number of Kenya Defence Forces troops that have fallen to "water hole" ambushes near or inside Somalia, and the nature of the conflict in Somalia, Northern Nigeria [ Boko Haram ] and Central African Republic [ Lords Resistance Army ], it may be helpful if the Kenyan military was to dig deeper into history and reclaim the many lost lessons.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Professor Peter Kagwanja Dr. Monica Juma Colonel Pius T. Migue Lieutenant Colonel Charles O. Imbiakha Major Daniel Mugoro Major David Anachoni Major Johannes Kimwele
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo
In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined—and millions continue to suffer.
Provocatively drawing a sharp contrast between African countries that have rejected the aid route and prospered and others that have become aid-dependent and seen poverty increase, Moyo illuminates the way in which overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the "need” for more aid.
Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world’s poorest countries that guarantees economic growth and a significant decline in poverty—without reliance on foreign aid or aid-related assistance.Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions.
Belonging in Africa
When Sara and Sam fall in love, they presume Sara's white European skin and Sam's black African skin will not be of interest in 1978 Nairobi, the cosmopolitan and free-thinking capital of Kenya where they both live. They are wrong. Soon they must face painful prejudices from the outside world, as well as their own families. They also slowly realize that unexpected deep-rooted differences exist between them.Sara and her Dutch expat parents have happily settled in Kenya for a few years, but this is only the latest in a long list of countries they called home. Soon Sara's father will be transferred to a new position, and the family must move to a new country again.But things are different for Sara this time. She is 18 years old, and absolutely certain she belongs in Kenya. She plans to stay forever--especially after she falls passionately in love with Sam.After all, on the surface of it, Sara and Sam have a great deal in common. They both come from comfortable middle-class families. They attend excellent schools as academic high achievers. They balance on the cusp of adulthood, and have every reason to think their futures will be bright. But soon enough, the differences between them are too apparent to be ignored, even by them. And this is only the start of the ordeals Sam and Sara must overcome.Sara is a pampered only child. Sam is the eldest son of the first wife of a polygamous Ugandan family. Sara does not at first understand the significance of his position. It takes time for her to see how deeply his young life is influenced by the many responsibilities that rest on his shoulders.The lovers suffer from prejudices from people close to them, as well as from strangers. They are startled to discover that both sets of parents oppose their union, and believe their child should find a better partner within their own cultures.Perhaps most complicated of all is the slow realization that Sara and Sam have very different expectations of each other. Sam presumes he has certain rights as the man in the relationship. Sara does not automatically subscribe to his position of leader, or consider it her duty to follow.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Jo Alkemade
Keeping Hope Alive
The moving memoir of one brave woman who, along with her daughters, has kept 90,000 of her fellow citizens safe, healthy, and educated for over 20 years in Somalia. Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. Since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty. She turned her 1300 acres of farmland into a camp that has numbered up to 90,000 displaced people, ignoring the clan lines that have often served to divide the country. She inspired her daughters, Deqo and Amina, to become doctors. Together, they have saved tens of thousands of lives in her hospital, while providing an education to hundreds of displaced children. In 2010, Dr. Abdi was kidnapped by radical insurgents, who also destroyed much of her hospital, simply because she was a woman. She, along with media pressure, convinced the rebels to let her go, and she demanded and received a written apology.Dr. Abdi's story of incomprehensible bravery and perseverance will inspire readers everywhere.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Hawa Abdi
Dinner With Mugabe by Heidi Holland
This penetrating, timely portrait of Robert Mugabe is the psycho-biography of a man whose once-brilliant career has ruined Zimbabwe and cast shame on the African continent.
Heidi Holland's tireless investigation begins with her having dinner with Mugabe, the freedom fighter, and ends in a searching interview with Zimbabwe's president more than 30 years later.
The author charts Mugabe's gradual self-destruction, and uncovers the complicity of some of the most respectable international players in the Zimbabwe tragedy. Probing the mystery of Africa's loyalty to one of its worst dictators, Holland explores the contradictions that cloud the life of a man who had embodied the continent's promise.