Africa Books

Amistad shows what happended in the 1800's based on slavery with Africans who were kidnaped by white people who did not spoke thier language, how the fed them almost like dogs, how the crew treated the African women, how they decided who died and who lived and the people who died throw them of the boat, it was awful, how people bought slaves under the table around the world.

Eventhough I only saw the movie it made me understand that Africans and colored people at that time where treated like animals, they didn't have rights as human beings and white people were the "Kings or Gods" who rule the world, they decided they where the superior race or something like that.

In my opinion this movie or book would be helpful for future generations so that humanity doesn't repeat this errors that where commited in the past to make them understand that that is not right, eventhough some people doesn't care about religion to teach them that God doesn't care about race he cares about us human beings, on what we do and whom we love, and even with technology we don't rule the world because we don't really have the power. Just because a contry has the money of the world doesen't mean we rule other contries or make a club whom their objective is beating other people just because they are not the same as them the only one who judge us is God and God alone.

This book was turned into a movie, but like most books, it's better than the movie. It's hard to imagine that such things happened, but they really did. I'd liek to learn more about the people on the ship and thier lives once they got home and to freedom

Myers, Walter Dean (1998) Amistad: A Long Road to Freedom. New York: Dutton Children's Books and DreamWorks. 99pgs. ISBN: 0-525-45970-7. Chapter and Picture Book. Primary Topics: Slavery, Abolitionism, US Political, Legal History; Ethnicity, Morality, Diversity. Young Adult -- Grade 5-9.

This book is a marvelously drawn narrative history of the Amistad saga that begins with a contextual portrait of the Atlantic slave trade which was by 1808 illegal, though still widely practiced as this case shows. Myers traces the dramatic journey of Sengbe, a rice farmer in Mani and the future leader of the ship-board revolt from his capture by other Africans and sale to a Spanish slave-trader to the horrible Middle Passage to Cuba and the eventual landing on Long Island and capture by US Navy personal. It is in New London and New Haven, Connecticut that this case begins a near three-year legal, moral, and political conflict that touched the United States profoundly at the time and for years afterwards. Myers describes and analyzes in minute yet engrossing detail the legal battle waged between the forces of slavery and the forces of abolition in this country while never losing sight of the fascinating personalities involved. Using historic maps, engravings, and photographs, and displaying some painstaking research into primary sources (without source notes), Myers makes the case come alive and provides an engaging companion work to Spielberg's motion picture (DreamWorks owns part of the copyright), going beyond the time scope of the movie to follow many of the characters after their victorious Supreme Court case to an abolitionist community in Connecticut and eventually home to Africa. One of Africans even returned again to America to attend college!

I have no reservation using this book in a middle school or high school history class. It discusses the specific historical context in clear language that would serve as either a good introduction to the issues of slavery and abolitionism for middle school students or as a refresher and supplement for high school students of US history. It is written in a narrative style that is compelling and engaging for teens (and adults), but does not disengage when it pauses for analytical treatment of complex political or legal issues. Rather, Myers discusses many of these complex issues (especially the legal ones) in ways that simplify but do not reduce the contradictory moral issues at the heart of the story. Thus the built in tension of the story is preserved. I was compelled to read on even though I knew the ending.

Myers begins with a brief overview of the importation of slaves into the United States, describing the contradictions of the American Revolution regarding slaves and the Constitutional restriction of importing slaves into the US after 1808 as well as the international restrictions in place by that time. Britain outlawed slavery in 1787 and subsequently made treaties with other countries over the issue including one with Spain in 1817 that made exportation of slaves from Africa illegal. But because slavery itself was legal in both the US and the Spanish colonies, Myers makes clear that there was still a great deal of illegal slave trading going on. He even allows for the possibility that the slave cargo of the Amistad that revolted three days out of Havana (ostensibly bound for Puerto Principe in south-east Cuba) was in fact destined for the Carolinas to provide the rice plantations with skilled agricultural workers.

In a section discussing the economic costs and prices of boats, slaves, and provisions, Myers shows that the economic incentives were high enough to interest certain types of businessmen into risking defiance of international law by continuing the brutal enslavement of West Africans and their forced transportation to the Americas. He says, in fact, that the highest prices for young, strong laborers were being paid in the United States. These facts alone provide much fodder for classroom discussions into the nature of slavery as an economic system and lend support for critical examination of this still controversial topic and its legacies.

Myers' book has a cast of dozens of interesting historical personalities, major and minor, famous and infamous. Among the famous and infamous were John Quincy Adams (who argued on behalf of the Africans to the Supreme Court) and Roger Tawney (sitting on that Court) who would later author the Dred Scott decision. The roles and positions of many abolitionists involved in the case are described from Robert Purvis and Rev. James W.C. Pennington to William Lloyd Garrison and Lewis Tappan. In examining the abolitionist movement as it publicized and championed the Amistad captives from the moment of their capture to their eventual return to Africa, Myers depicts a diverse movement of reformers and radicals, some of whom were not opposed to using the Africans for political ends beyond their own personal fates, whether it was proselytizing Christianity or attempting to set legal precedents in their quest to reform slavery out of existence. Again to Myers credit, he shows them as they were historically in all their contradictions.

As Myers writes towards the end of the book, "Perhaps the most important aspect of the efforts of Lewis Tappan, Austin F. Williams, Joshua Leavitt, the other abolitionists, as well as the attorneys involved was that they allowed the world to see the Africans as human beings." Likewise, he describes in personalizing, humanizing detail, the principle protagonists of this historic drama: Sengbe, Kali, Kague, Margru, Foone, Burna, and others, who by their words, actions, and prayers demanded and pleaded and fought to be "given free."

This is a fantastic story about a lazy, messy spider whose home is the eye sore of an animal neighborhood. Anansi envies Hyena, who appears to do no work at all, and yet all his house work is completed. His yard is always beautiful; everything seems in perfect order. The mischievous spider shadows Hyena to discover his secret: a magic stick that does its owner's bidding when a special chant is uttered. Greedy Anansi schemes to obtain the magic stick and its power for himself. However, with great power comes great responsibility--as the sneaky spider soon discovers.

This beautifully illustrated book captures the fun of the Anansi tale while also teaching the importance of one's personal and social responsibilities. What is very nice in this story is the character of Anansi actually looks like a spider whereas in some children's books, he is shown in a more human-like form.

The tale is fun to read out-loud. It echoes the same universal themes as The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and some intriguing lessons might come from comparison / contrasts activities.

This book is as great as jumping in a pool on a hot summer day!! It is about a spider who likes playing tricks on animals. It takes place in Africa. This book is super silly and funny. I think anyone who likes adventures should read it!
By, Tucker

I remember Anansi the Spider when I was a child, now I read about the spider with my son! Sheesh!
The little spider has dealings with all the animals in his neighborhood about his messy house. While everyone else cleans and works he sleeps. Finally he decides to do something about it, but with someone else's tool, not thinking of the result.
This book made us crack up. At the same time, it taught us a lesson about not being greedy, and doing your own work.
I recommend it highly.

Anansi the spider bores his way into one of Elephant's melons and thus begins the great trickery of some of the greatest animals in the Animal Kingdom. I used this book with the second grade class and we loved the human characteristics of the animals and all the funny things Anansi says while he is in the melon. It is a great book to act out in the puppet theater and we had great fun taking on the roles of the elephant, monkey, spider and other surprised and astonished animals.

My 5 year old son LOVED the mischief Anansi got into and understood the lessons that were being taught. It is written in a way that younger kids can understand and the illustrations are great!

That Anansi is such a scoundral!!

After boring into one of Elephants melons, he eats himself too big to get out!! So, Anansi waits to get thing again...Only, he's bored! So he decides to amuse himself at Elephant's expense... and Hippo's...and Warthog's...Well, you get the idea.

This is a cute story about a trickster spider. Janet Stevens' illustrations are, as always, excellent. Anansi is not just a regular spider. Stevens gives him expressions and a personality. You wind up laughing with Anansi's pranks. Very well done!

I would definitly recommend this book. I read it to a group of young school age kids - 5-9. They could kinda tell where the story was going, but were more than willing to sit for the ride.

To learn more about Anansi stories, we purchased this audio CD, and we are not disappointed! Mr. Norfolk's stories and deliveries bring smiles and laughter into your household or to your own "Anansi Time." This lively "personality" product can be enjoyed by children as well as adults, anyone who loves to hear good stories well-told. Our favorite stories from this CD are "How Light Came Into the World" and "Anansi and the Tug o' War." Norfolk's sound effects and character voices are brilliant.

For teachers, this product is useful in many ways:

1) as an addition to multicultural units
2) as an example of "public" speaking
3) as an example of storytelling for effect (acting / voice / dialogue)
4) as an engaging listening exercise

I saw him live at our local library, and I think the parents were just as amused as the children. Children of all ages, from toddler to preteens, enjoyed his stories. It was a wonderful experience and I would not hesitate to buy several of his CDs.

Bobby Norfolk tells these stories very well. He catches the fun of Anansi stories and does a great job of creating the different voices. Our three year old son loves to listen to this CD and becomes absorbed in the stories.

This book gives the reader an insight into a fresh and new yet contradictory view on EUROPEAN CONSTRUCTIONS of the AFRICAN BODY. A great read.

A very sophisticated piece of work. With great insght into many medical/historical perceptions and social mechanisms!
Absolutely Stunning!

P.S: Looking forward to another one.

A disquieting and destabilising experience is what I was left with after reading Butchart's Anatomy of Power. On beginning the book, I at first thought that it was just another social history, albeit incredibly detailed in its probing of what doctors did in the name of science. But, as a I read on, the commanding thesis of the work took ever greater shape, and by the end I was as convinced as Butchart is of the argument that without the socio-medical sciences there can be no bodies at all. This leaves one with a real dilemma in terms of what to do in terms of liberation and the struggle against oppression. While the book doesn't answer this key question, it surely poses it with a greater degree of lucidity and insight than many other books about Africa, colonialism and liberation.

Highly recommended!

Daniel Kuhlmann, Stockholm

This is an admirable volume II, consistent with what made volume I my first choice. In this volume, there are monumental inscriptions, instructional literature (including some very amusing works on the scribal life), hymns (including the great hymn to Osiris, and the Akhenaten hymns to the Sun), selections from the 'Book of the Dead', some prose tales and a factual narrative. Introductions and notes are terrific. Ka's are left untranslated.

Ms. Lichtheim has done a wonderful job in her book, Ancient Egyptian Literature: New Kingdom! Her selections cover a wide range.She has a small introduction to each piece, besides the introductionto the book itself. Her placement of notes at the end of each selection is a godsend, no more madly turning to the back searching for the appropriate notes! An excellent choice for those interested in Egyptian history, or simply those wanting a better understanding of ancient literature. Buy it, it's worth it!

Finally, a collection of good and readable translations of Egyptian literature which both the layperson and the expert will find useful. Lichtheim has given the academic world a much needed reference with the translations of the text and a good introduction to the social history of the creators and the circumstances of the texts being recovered.

THIS GREAT BOOK IS IDEAL FOR AVANCED STUDY ABOUT EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE...ITS CONTENS ARE VERY USEFUL, MORPHOLOGY, SINTAX, A GREAT GRAMMAR...WITH A LOT OF EXAMPLES. A ANCIENT LANGUAGE HISTORY: EARLY, LATER EGYPTIAN, AND COTIC. VERY...VERY...GOOD... EXCELENT....

This work is probably the best exposition on the Egyptian language available to the general public currently. The chapter on phonology is highly commendable for the presentation of believable reconstructions of original pronunciations of Egyptian words, including inflections, which one sorely misses in most other works. However, without sound grounding in linguistics, the contents are often difficult to comprehend, especially the sections on grammar. Nevertheless, the book is certainly an indispensable and authoritative reference on this subject matter for every serious student of Egyptology and/or Egyptian language.

This is the first time that the insight of modern linguistics has been applied to the long and careful investigations into the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The hieroglyphic system and its different varieties (with its phonology, morphology and syntax) are explained. It is an excellent book but hard to follow if a person has little or no knowledge of linguistics. Otherwise, it is perfect for learning about the language - not for translating hieroglyphs. Lots of examples have been taken from actual Egyptian texts (ie, The Tale of Sinuhe, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, etc.). As the back cover says, it is "essential reading for linguists and Egyptologists alike."

"Restriction of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended and all the land redivided amongst those who work it... That state shall help the peasants... Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed...All shall have the right to occupy land... People shall not be robbed of their cattle, and forced labor and farm prisons shall be abolished."

These are excerpts from the Freedom Charter of the South African National Congress, which led the revolution against apartheid to victory in the 1990s. Was it supported by the leaders of the "Free World", the U.S. and U.K., who are now waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan for "democracy"? Not on your life. They supported and profited from the apartheid system. Learn how forefathers of today's imperialists took the land of South Africa by force and unspeakable terrorist violence against the masses of South Africa.

Other suggested Reading: The Struggle is My Life by Nelson Mandela
New International No. 5, "The Coming Revolution in South Africa," by Jack Barnes.

Written before the overthrow of apartheid in 1990, this 69-page booklet nonetheless provides an essential collection of facts describing an important method that the minority government used to maintain its rule.

Practically from the time they set foot in what has become South Africa, white settlers from Europe laid out plans to disenfranchise blacks from their land. Through a series of wars, laws and theft, the descendants of Dutch and British settlers managed to disposses blacks and appropriate 87 percent of the land for themselves.

The great land theft was as vital to sustaining apartheid as was cheap black labor in the nation's gold and diamond mines and other industries. But from the beginning, blacks resisted white claims on their land, which became codified in the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress. Its leader, Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for his fight against apartheid, became the first president of free South Africa in 1994.

Harsch's pamphlet is based on two articles he wrote in the Dec. 16, 1985 and Dec. 30, 1985 issues of the newsweekly Intercontinental Press. He describes the social inequalities of apartheid land system, and the fight to eradicate them.

Black farmers were turned into sharecroppers, land tenants and peasants on land that they had farmed communally for centuries before the arrival of the white settlers.

When they were given some land, it was often the least arable and only in small plots. White farmers benefited from government loans and assistance, while blacks were left on their own.

White farmers often preferred to hire black women in the fields because the lack of child care meant they also benefited from the labor of their children, Harsch reports. Beatings and punishment of blacks were common.

The apartheid masters created 10 Bantusans, so-called national homelands for blacks. But they were a cruel joke. In the Ciskei homeland, Harsch writes, dry land conditions managed to feed very few people. "Just 27,000 of the 375,000 rural Ciskeians have enough land to enable them to also keep cattle. Nearly a third of the Ciskei's people have no land at all," according to Harsch. "In the Ciskei, 40 percent of the population is unemployed, and 89 percent of the children suffer from malnutrition." This, in one of Africa's richest countries.

Important changes have occurred in South Africa since the struggle against apartheid succeeded in bringing down that hated system and putting Nelson Mandela at the head of a new nation. This little book was written before this transformation but it documents the urgency of one of the central remaining tasks. What must now be completed is "seizing the land from the dispossessor," as one of Mandela's close comrades put it. In other words a radical land reform that would open the land to those whose ancestors were forcibly driven from it. Why is the question of land ownership so important in South Africa today? This book explains how the central pillar of apartheid was the expulsion of native farmers from their land. Many did not even have a concept of private ownership, they simply farmed it in common. As Harsch points out, 87% of land became restricted only to whites. The author explains in a very readable way how land-theft was at the very center of the steps that marginalized the Black toilers. A fight for land-reform is necessary in order to build a worker-farmer alliance, the author cogently argues In so doing he affirms one of the chief demands contained in the freedom charter of Mandela's African National Congress-"the land must be shared among those who work it." Steve Clark's introduction helps to link Harsch's book to other valuable readings.

If you enjoy reading about the history of paleontological discoveries as much as I do, then this is a book for you. It's a well-written and informative overview of what is currently known about Proconsul and some related apes. The text doesn't drag at any point; on the contrary it moves along, informing the reader the entire way. I hope to see more from these authors.

I ordered this book from Amazon, which is good because had I scanned the first few pages in a bookstore I might have put it back on the shelf. The reason being that it begins with a whole lot of personal history concerning both Shipman and earlier researchers of the 20th century. Readers will know that some "science" books are heavily oriented toward biography and I personally am not very interested in that genre. In the event, however, this book turned out to be very good.

By the time I finished the book I had come to appreciate just how much the history of paleontology has influenced its current state. That and I've been reading similar books for five decades and this background plus the bi-monthly headlines about the NEWEST DISCOVERY in the popular press can really become an overload, especially as theories in the field are so changeable. So the first half of the book which deals, often from a biographically oriented perspective, with this history was very helpful. And Shipman himself is no dogmatist, treating all fairly as far as I could tell. Also the general theme of not forcing our current catagories (ape/monkey,in this case) onto the fossil record was very helpful.

The second half of the book is more involved with the science itself. Ever wonder how a fragment of a jawbone can lead some researcher to identify the animal as an adolescent female member of the ape family? Read this book and wonder no more. It was just amazing to see how many general conclusions can be drawn from sometimes very limited fossil remains and if you don't already know I suggest you buy this book to find out. There's plenty of science in the last chapters and very manageably but not condescendingly served up.

Oh, "ape in a tree": Proconsul: a)fossils found in a hollow tree trunk b)lived in or among trees c) is in our family tree. Did I miss any?

Alan Walker's involvement with the discover of fossil ape Proconsul began when his graduate supervisor analyzed the tree-climbing adaptations of this extinct creature: Walker's history of the evolution of ideas surrounding the create is almost as engrossing as the focus on the last common ancestor between all apes and humans itself. This insider's journey through the discovery and history of the ideas of Proconsul follows evolutionary theory as a whole, providing an African adventure of research conducted in the Leakey tradition. Told in the first person, The Ape In The Tree will engross not just scientists but also non-specialist general readers interested in evolutionary science.

This book covers the overlooked area of African Gold. It shows how Africa contributed to The World's gold culture and How Ashanti Goldfields LTd. is continuing that legacy.

This book is incredible! It offers a rich history of the area in west Africa made famous not only for its gold, but for the millions of people sold off into slavery throughout the dark years of new world colonization in the post-Columbus era. The photos are breathtaking, and the text full of wonderful imagery and stories... I would recommend this book to anyone with a love of African history and an eye for beauty! It makes an amazing coffee table book and a wonderful gift.

This book is incredible! It offers a rich history of the area in west Africa made famous not only for its gold, but for the millions of people sold off into slavery throughout the dark years of new world colonization in the post-Columbus era. The photos are breathtaking, and the text full of wonderful imagery and stories... I would recommend this book to anyone with a love of African history and an eye for beauty! It makes an amazing coffee table book and a wonderful gift.