Africa Books

My kids just love Jamela. It is so good for kids to read about children in other countries. Children without hundreds of toys and endless pressure on them, but with a loving family and community where fun things happen. We also enjoyed "christmas" and Yebo Jamela.

my granddaughter and I have read this book a dozen times since Christmas, when Santa brought her the book. She has taken it to school to share with the other girls. It is a total joy. It would have been even better, it there would have been a little explanation of the country the story was taking place in.

You can get ready for World Cup 2010 in South Africa by reading this book, and if for some reason, it is played somewhere else, it is still worthwhile reading. It should be reprinted.

I saw a list on the 50 best books on soccer to read from the magazine Four Four Two; and this one certainly belongs on that list. It wasn't there, but it was better than some I read that were on the list and that list is subjective anyway; as you read on what interests you; if you are interested in Africa; you'll gobble this book right up!

Peter Auf Der Heyde, the author really loves his subject; grew up in South Africa; both with Apartheid and with out it. He played goalkeeper for black teams in South Africa and is a journalist with a unique perspective. I'd read about anything by him; he is an encyclopedia on African soccer (which by the way, he calls someone else that in the book).

We read about his journeys to World Cup and African Nations Cup qualifiers as well, as viewing games at the World Cup and at the Cup of African Nations. Besides that, we read his coverage of the South African bid to hold the World Cup in 2006; which obviously failed, so the next time, was there time.

He travels the continent to see these games and of course, in one chapter, he was off to France to see the World Cup.

We learn about Muti (seems to be what black magic would be in South Africa) and Voodoo being used in soccer games in Africa, the amiable and pleasant nature of the players from there, about problems that had happened in stadiums that caused disasters, even the common subject in soccer about corruption in it's adminstration and associations among many topics and many countries.

Early in the book, we find out about the Football (read Soccer) Associations in South Africa, Auf Der Heyde's homebase country and a bit of the way it was during Apartheid and afterwards. This goes into quite a bit of detail; but it doesn't last long and is important. After that, this is an exceptional book, to read at night about faraway places and exotic locales. If Auf Der Heyde ever rights a sequel; I think, the only thing, Auf Der Heyde did not cover is the question there is about some African's birthdates in soccer. I'm sure he could tell us a lot about this. He is so knowledgeable in this field; I think, I could chat with him on African football (soccer) for hours.

There are a number of pages of photos which are in color. Quite a few of the pictures are noteworthy, including one of the author with Nelson Mandela.

If one enjoys this book, the movie on South Africa; Catch a fire I would recommend as well.

A joy to read both for the African and the football observations. Totally off the beaten path, and better for it.

An excellent collection of short fiction. Each tale is as compelling, as it is entertaining. Conrad is one of the best short story writers ever he is like a darker Stevenson who delves into the human psyche.

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

This book combines the full text of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" with critical notes. There's no need to work with a separate study guide, which makes this read a seamless study of this classic work of literature. Highly recommended.

I read this book for a graduate Humanities course. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind. Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book. Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie. After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane! I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story. Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain. High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle. Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand. The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

This book is a goldmine of information that uncovers Hebrewisms in African rituals and history all over Africa. It is also connected with some very recent research by antoher Amazon.com writer, Dr. Linda Thomas of Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. As an anthropologist/theologian, she studied water purification rituals among Africans in Uguleto, South Africa. These rituals are very close to those in the Old Testament. The content in Dr. Williams' book further connects these types of rituals as they occur throughout the continent Africa. It is an amazing breakthrough in research.

I have used the contents of this book in many interesting ways. Just the other day, I was talking with an 80-year old woman at church, whose mother came from Madagascar, as a slave. I was able to share with her some of the information in the book about the Hebrewisms found in the Africans of Madagascar (some of whom were brought to South Africa as slaves by the Dutch). I was able to tell her that it may be possible that her ancestors might have descended from the ancient Black Jews of Canaan, who migrated down through Africa at various points in their history, and whose Jewish rituals were discovered by various historians at various periods. She is an African American. This is not the first time that I have presented this information in order to establish the fact that Jesus Christ, and the Jews of the Old Testament in many ways, were ancestors of the Africans who were brought here, from all over the continent of Africa as slaves.

It should be in the collection of every researcher into the history of Africans on the continent and throughout the Diaspora.

For several years I had been trying to find some books of valid and substantial merit dealing with Jews who had made their way into West Africa. Often there are books written on the topic that essentially prove nothing or do not provide sources for their assertions. Hebrewisms of West Africa is far different, especially since it was written in the 1930's. Truly, this books is a very good collection of various accounts of people who professed to believe that various ethnic groups in Africa were of mixed African, Semitic, and Israelite ancestry. I was also able to get a 1931 first edition copy of the book, which I treasure.

Many of the accounts center around a question of whether the Ashanti are of Israelite ancestry. Though today this may be questionable since from what I understand the Ashanti don't assert such a claim of themselves. The book covers a number of sources from various explorers and authors who had been either searching or writing on the issue of possible Jewish traces in West Africa. On a side note though a friend of mine asked an Ashanti scholar if they had Jewish ancestry and the scholar avowed that the Ashanti have never circumcised.

This book really helps my research in this area. It is interesting that once I got this book, other sources started to open up to me, and to think this book was published in 1931! How has this book been overlooked for so long? More than likely it is due to the fact that there no longer exists a continuous Jewish presence out of West Africa. It is good that the book also pushes forth the hope that future scholarship will further the topic of Jewish migrations into Africa.

The book also does not go down the path of claiming that all Africans are Hebrews or Israelites, and does not get into a racist flare either. (since it was written iin 1930's before any of the Hebrew Israelite movements had picked up steam). This book goes down the path that some Africans are of a mix of African and Jewish ancestry, and others could be of earlier mixes with Semitic peoples. The conclusion is very interesting also.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is seriously researching this subject of early accounts of Semitic peoples and Jews in Africa.

another collectors item for africa lovers and people,still phots of a africa who was unspoilt of tourist in those days

The collaborative effort of Isolde Brielmaier (Visiting Professor of Art at Vassar College) and Ed Marquand (Director of the Hector Acebes Archive), Hector Acebes: Portraits In Africa, 1948-1953 showcases the photography of Acebes taken in Africa in 1948, 1949, and 1953. These black and white photographic images have justifiably been acclaimed as some of the most beautiful photographs of Africans ever taken. The images, however, were hidden away in Acebes' photography studio in Bogota, Columbia, and it was not until 2003 (when Acebes was 82 years old) that he had his first art gallery exhibition. With the publication of Hector Acebes: Portraits In Africa, 1948-1953, (which is enthusiastically recommended for personal, academic, and community library Photography Studies collections) full justice has now been accomplished with respect to bringing a lasting access to Acebes's photographic artistry to the general public.

In the style of "The House That Jack Built", this book employs delightful repetitions and stunning illustrations to give children a picture of the animals who inhabit the African savanna. I read this book on a regular basis to children of all ages (and lots of adults), and they all enjoy it. In fact, I have worn out my initial copy, and have had to order another!

This is a wonderful example of a circular story with excellent repeated lines and incredible pictures. It shows the connections of the various animals and plants of the Savanna.

A must for teachers and parents!

This book is an edited compilation of Ernie Pyles' dispatches during the North African Campaign of World War Two (each chapter was originally two or three columns and were woven together to make the story flow better). It describes the sea voyage from England, the landing in Algiers, and the drive across North Africa, ending with the German retreat and surrender.

Pyle gives a great accounting of all of the different types of people that compile a war effort - the nurses, cooks, mechanics, pilots, and of course the infantry. He tends to stay away from the brass and talk with the soldiers. The style of writing is very quaint - when ever a soldier is introduced in a story, Pyle gives his/her hometowm and often his/her address as well. The writing flows surprisingly well - and I say surprisingly because if one just looks at the text, consisting of short sentences and paragraphs, it would give the illusion of being choppy. It is infact beautifully written from a humanistic stand point.

Pyle doesn't gloss over the horrors of war, his own fear, the hardships or the set backs. He talks about the mistakes we made in the administration of captured Algiers, and how we were defeated in the initial combat against the Germans.

The reason why Pyle was/is so famous is he brings to life all of the warm anectodes that make life in a combat zone bearable - the unselfish acts of courage and kindness - as well as the sense of loss when a friend will no longer be with us. That was the true beauty of Pyle's work.

Again, this is a fantastic book for anyone seeking to learn who were the men and women that fought WWII and what life was like for them.

A fascintating read. This book gets you right into the actual experiences faced by our soldiers. It is about feelings, conditions, etc.

Jamil M. Abun-Nasr's History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period is a finely detailed tapestry which sweeps from the early days of the Al-Moravids in Morocco to the post-colonial regimes in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. While the book is academic in tone, it is so well written as to be accessible to the casual reader, so long as one is willing to come to grips with the intracacies of Maghreban dynastic politics.

While I learned more from the first half of the book, which discusses pre-Modern Maghreban history; the second portion covering the modern era was particularly relevant in light of the recent rioting in France. Abun-Nasr vividly describes how the European powers - under the guise of bringing civilization - ruthlessly exploited their North African colonies, and to some degree continue to do so to this day. Although the fruits of their policies were most bitter in Algeria, it is clear that throughout the Maghrib the European powers' short-sighted pursuit of commercial gain had long-term repercussions for everyone involved.

This is one of the few books that you can buy on the history of North West Africa that can be read again and again. There is a wealth of information contained in this book which covers (as the title suggests) North West Africa's history from the 7th century Arab conquest until the recent present day.

The information contained within the book is concise and straight to the point. The author has obviously spent a great deal of time amassing a wealth of information on North West African history from a variety of Arabic, French and English sources for example, his extensive use of the great historian Wansharisi is of particular benefit when discussing the development of Islamic culture in North West Africa.

The book covers the various Islamic dynasties in the Maghrib, the society and culture of the region, the French, Portuguese and Spanish conquests of the region including the colonial period, independence and the nations struggle for self identity.

This is a first class book for students of Islamic history or African history and I would strongly recommend the book to University students studying subjects related to the region.

This is an unbelievable documentation of the horrors of aparthaid that will leave you breathless. It is so hard to believe that this status was ongoing in South Africa up until the 1990's. I had no idea that the severe discrimination wasn't even in place until early in the 20th century. The indignities and oppressive status of blacks in South Africa during this time period, shown in pictures by Ernest Cole should be understood by blacks and whites alike. It makes much of the discrimination that occured here in the US pale by comparison. I thank God that things are improving in South Africa. I visited there in 2001 and again in 2006 and the difference in race relations had changed a great deal for the better.

South African documentary photographer Ernest Cole critically subverts the operations of the archive. Cole has the ability to officially change his racial status from black to colored, due to ambiguities in the government's methods of documenting and systematizing racial identification, in order to gain access to broader strata of society for his photographic project. Cole's black-and-white photographs depict passbook arrests, police inspections, dehumanizing conditions in the diamond mines, "white only" signage in the city--images that would have been subject to censoring.

Cole, when stopped and questioned by authorities, masqueraded his photographs as documents of youth crime rather than as records of the violence of institutional apartheid policy. In this way, Cole's negatives passed archivally. Presenting his work in the guise of documentary visual policing, Cole was able to leave South Africa with his negatives and go to the United States, where House of Bondage was published. This operation of critical camouflaging, of archival mimicry as a critical practice in the realm of photographic production, will fuel this examination of the ways in which the body is represented archivally in contemporary photography from South Africa.