South Africa Books

The size of the book is appropriate for carrying in the field. The narrative is concise and well presented. The pictures of the birds are easy to reference. The real test of a field guide, though, is how useful it is when there is an unidentified bird in front of you. I will not know that until I get back from S. Africa in March but this book appears comparable to the better guides for US birds.

We wanted to label all the photos of birds we took in South Africa. This book made it easy to locate the drawings of the birds. . .drawings that were very lifelike. . .and attach the names to the photos. We highly recommend this guide.

This guide looks perfect for my needs. I have looked it over carefully, even though I haven't had a chance to use it in the field. I definitely like the quick reference guide to bird types inside the front and back covers and the color-coded reference to bird groups. Look forward to using this guide in the field.

Well worth the money to enjoy your trip to South Africa even more. Even with a good guide (like we had with Transfrontiers) it is well worth taking a strong field guide like Birds of Southern Africa. That way when your guide is trying to tell you what you are looking at, you can see the picture up close and get a better idea. We have done many trips to various parts of Africa and this is one of the best guides we have used.

Warning: using this field guide will make you dissatisfied with many other field guides. You will enjoy studying and using this guide.
The illustrations are large and detailed, distinctly more accurate than most guides. In addition most are just beautiful works. They are grouped in species settings with juveniles, alternate plumage, flight and significant field marks highlighted.
On the opposite page: written description, habitat, abundancy status and call descriptions with a range map plus the Afrikaans name.
As an example of the illustrations: the Laughing Dove is illustrated by two flight poses and a profile. The profile has arrows noting 'no hind collar', 'cinnamon back' and 'black-flecked necklace'. The written text notes marks that distinguish this bird from a Cape Turtle-Dove.
The cover is plastic coated and the pages have a lesser water resistant coating.
A lot of attention to detail went into creating this book --colored coded page edges according to bird group, groups of waterbirds and hawks in flight for comparison, a checklist near the index and internet addresses of birding resources in the area.
All this in a work that I carried in a large pants pocket every day.
It just makes me wish such books were available for many more areas.

This book is slow, not in terms of boring, but in that one can't rush through it. The story of Joshua's transition from a missionary sent by his mission to becoming a missionary made by God with a clear and true vision is one that has to be absorbed as it is read. Imagine being a Black from the States chosen by your white mission to go to South Africa to preach to other blacks just because you're also black. You're told what to preach and what your opinions should be and not to stir up the "natives". Interesting and inspiring book to me about self growth as a Christian. Eula O.

This book took me to South Africa. I love every word, sentence and chapter of this book. When I finished this book, I found myself going back to visit the chracters, because I had missed them. Highly recommended. This is a story of faith, and love. I can't wait until this author writes another book. Please hurry!!!!!!

The attention to historical and cultural detail in this book brings alive a time and a place far away from most of us. It also raises up the multifaceted nature of social and racial discrimination in a way that is breathtakingly balanced. A beautiful read.

This book was a wonderful read and it was written masterfully. It is a love story, about a young dynamic minister who travels to Africa to fall in love with the people, the country and a local woman named Nongolesi. I felt swept away by the detail and beauty of this novel, and I could not put the novel down. I hope there will be a sequel!!

Christian Fiction cannot better be characterized than by the addition of Joshua's Bible to its ranks. I must admit that it took me a long time to get to this book, I subconsciously put it on the back burner for a number of months but when I finally sat down and devoted the time to reading it, I was blown away by the level of maturity of the author, the content and story line of the novel and the level of involvement that I as the reader had in the story. Well written to say the least, a truly enjoyable novel.

Set in the 1930's and 40's, Joshua Clay is coming into his own, as a man and as a man of God. Graduating from Seminary in Philadelphia he is recommended by his Bishop to enter into the mission field even though he has an offer from his home church to be their minister. Deciding to stay at school, and after another year of intense training for such an honor, he is sent to Africa to begin preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who haven't experienced Him, as those in the states would like them to. Pride fills his family as he endeavors to do something so privileged but Joshua has misgivings on leaving and traveling so far that are echoed throughout his family and most especially with his girlfriend who again has to sit back and watch his career blossom without her. Upon arriving in Africa and experiencing the highly politicized and cultural division between Africans, Americans and Afrikaans Joshua experiences some measure of doubt between his calling and the necessity of his mission. This coupled with the friendships that he develops among a prominent family in the village that he calls home during his mission changes and matures Joshua in ways he hadn't imagined. He experiences love, and compassion. He experiences untold strength and courage and becomes a better man in the mission field. Joshua's Bible is a love story; a testimony to the way that God moves through our inner being and that is reflected to the outside world. I was amazed at the youthful maturity that Joshua displayed and his ability to orchestrate change.

Church book clubs immediately come to mind as a captive audience for Joshua's Bible. There are characters in the book and scenes that are tailor made for discussions in such a setting. The writing is wonderful, it seems that Miss Leanne has done a wonderful job of researching the characters and plot and combining these elements so eloquently. I haughtily recommend reading Joshua's Bible to any avid reader, a truly inspiring tale.

This book is the fascinating, inspiring and enlightening true story of a young man who was a political refugee from Kenya. He came to the US, graduated from college,and went on to law school here. He married a US citizen and they had a child. Seems like it would be a sure thing he could stay.....but not so fast! This is the story of his amazing struggle and shows how our system works. (Actually, not so well sometimes.) Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who enjoys a good read!
C. Bates, Eugene, Oregon

I couldn't set this book down. He literally goes through every possibility, facing years of uncertainty, and still keeps trying - and graduates college and law school in the meantime. I cannot imagine going through what he went through in Kenya, then coming to the US as a safe haven, and facing such a drawn-out, uphill battle simply to stay.

His story is not always easy to read but it is very engaging, even if, like me, you are not a lawyer or law student. David Kenney Ngaruri and his friends and colleagues in this book are very inspirational.

This is an eloquent and heartbreaking tale of one immigrant's journey throught the U.S. Immigration system. It reads like a John Grisham novel although the story is sadly true. The author, a 7-foot tall Kenyan, was a political prisioner in Kenya for his role as a labor organizer. He faced imprisonment and torture and was ultimately able to escape Kenya via the promise of a basketball scholarship in the United States. In his quest for political asylum in the U.S. he encouters heartless judges,corrupt officials, State Department bureaucrats, a beautiful "witch", kidnapping rebels, interpid law students and a dedicated and brilliant law profressor (his co-author). I couldn't put it down and felt a mixture of outrage at the U.S. immigration system while in awe of the power of the human spirit to overcome the most dauting of odds.

This is an amazing book that makes plain the unbelievable complexity of immigration law. Anyone with an interest in immigration policy should read this book.

For those of you looking for a good summer read to take to the beach, or just a great book to snuggle up with on a rainy day, I highly recommend opening up the pages of Asylum Denied. It is both informative and inspiring as it tells the story of David Kenney Ngaruri, the political asylee who struggled to stay in America. Although the book is currently being passed around law schools, as the new go-to-guide for asylum law, I am sure it will not be long before it makes the bestseller stands at nation-wide bookstores or grabs a spot on Oprah's booklist. Asylum Denied, written by two authors, the above-mentioned David Kenney Ngaruri and Philip Schrag, the professor of law at Georgetown University, serves both as a law manual and as a heart-warming story of adventure, perseverance, and love. Unlike most law-related books, it reads very smoothly and catches your attention from the first page. Even if this is not the usual type of book you read, I urge you to give it a try. If the face on the cover of the book is not enough to convince you to read it, then I hope this review will.

This has been one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Parfitt traces the origin of the Lemba, a self-described Jewish tribe in South Africa. Although its oral tradition is vague some elements recur persistently: "Our forefathers came from Sena... They came from the North... they built Great Zimbabwe...". Tracing backwards the journey that the Lemba took over the course of many generations, Parfitt travels North from South Africa to Zimbabwe, Malawi and, ultimately all the way to Yemen. Along the way, he encounters proof of the Lemba's passage and demonstrates that their oral tradition is, indeed, correct and they originated in Yemen.

Subsequent genetic testing brought further support to Parfitt's conclusion. This is detective work at its best, without the crime.

There is not a dull line in this book - I just got it after reading the author's Ark of the Covenant. It is one of the most remarkable journeys across Africa and the Middle East written in the sort of prose that is fast disappearing. The subject matter you feel is real. the charcaters are real. It's a journey with a point. It's a real mission. And a wonderful read.

It should probably be no surprise that the two most peripatetic peoples in the ancient world, Jews and Africans, should sooner or later have encountered one another.

Tudor Parfitt, a British academic, traces the origins of a Southern African tribe known as the Lemba, whose history both recorded and unrecorded embraces a claim to Jewish ancestry and identity.

Relying on scant written data and on the Lemba's own oral traditions and reports by contemporaries, the author traces backward the journey that the Lemba took over the course of many generations. Parfitt travels North from South Africa to Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and, ultimately to Yemen.

Along the way, he confronts evidence of the Lemba's passage and demonstrates that their oral tradition is, indeed, correct that they originated in Yemen where they embraced Judaism. Subsequent genetic testing brought further support to the Lemba's claims indicating not only a high proportion of Jewish genetic markers but specifically those markers associated with the Cohanim, the Levitical priestly caste of ancient Israel.

Starting off from Lemba villages in Vendaland, South Africa where he encounters Lemba customs such a circumcision, food taboos and a devotional life that to all appearances seem Jewish, the author retraces the quasi-legendary path of the Lemba's forbears through Southern, central and Eastern Africa and the Arabian peninsula, along the way embracing the lore and romance of King Solomon's mines and the building of the walled city of Great Zimbabwe.

This is a delightful story, delightfully told. The author's writing style is lively, mixing the styles of the travel essayist, the novelist and the scholar and gives rise to a rarely-encountered kind of work that is so compelling that once begun it simply cannot be put down.

I think that this book is very important because it preserves the legacy of the Lemba on paper, a legacy that for centuries, has relied mainly on oral traditions. The Lemba tribe, who presently reside in various parts of Southern Africa, have kept a tradition for hundreds of years that they are Jews, and Parfitt takes the journey to explore these claims.

The author, Tudor Parfitt, starts off in the northern parts of South Africa in Vendaland, where many Lemba reside today. From here he goes to the Zimbabwe ruins, then to Malawi, briefly to war-torn Mozambique, up to the east coast, and off to Yemen in search of "Sena," where the Lemba attest that they came from. In all these areas he finds interesting facts through his research about the Lemba and their history.

There is no doubt that the Lemba contributed to the building and livelihood of the Great Zimbabwe civilization that flourished in the 14th century, but the big question here is just how big was their role? With the history of the Lemba becoming more popular, I think this debate is going to resurface once again as to who built the ruins.

This book relies on earlier descriptions of the Lemba by mostly European and Arab explores. Parfitt really makes good use of these. The book also highlights the indelible influence that colonialism has had not just on the Lemba, but on all African societies. It also underscores the prevailing attitudes that many "white Africans" today have on black Africans.

The genetic evidence presented in the afterword makes for a good ending to strengthen the core theme in the book. I highly recommend Journey to The Vanished City and I think it's an excellent, scholarly work.

The author's quest for the origins of the Lemba, a Southern Africa tribe with certain Semitic customs and a folk memory of Jewish origins, took him from Johannesburg via the Limpopo province of South Africa, through Zimbabwe and Malawi to Tanzania and ultimately to the Hadramaut in South Arabia.

In Johannesburg's Soweto township he encounters his first Lemba people and researches the tribe in Wits University library. Then he takes the train to Pietersburg where he visits Lemba scholar Professor Mathiva at the University of the North and makes excursions into the surrounding areas of the Venda and Lobedu tribes where he encounters Mojaji, the famous Rain Queen. The known history of the area, including the colorful figure of Joao Albasini, spices up the narrative.

In Zimbabwe his journeys take him to Bulawayo, the Matopo Hills, Mberengwe and Dumghe Mountains, Masvingo and the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. On the way he takes part in a Lemba tribal assembly. The next stage takes him to Malawi and a short way into Mozambique where he sees the town of Sena from afar. In Tanzania he visits Dar es Salaam, Bagamoyo and Tumbatu, concluding the African leg of his journey.

His research finally leads him to Yemen where he visits Sanaa, Aden and the Hadramaut towns of Habban, Terim, and ultimately, the town of Sena on the Wadi Masila, where he discovers that the Lemba clan names are familiar to the area.

Along the way he has funny ecounters with a wide variety of interesting people. The travelogue is interspersed with relevant quotes from an impressive array of explorers, missionaries, scholars and ethnographers, including Joao de Barros, Livingstone, Junod, Mauch, Schlomann, Schapera, Van Warmelo, Jacques, Von Sicard and Roger Summers. Their observations - including the legend of Monomotapa - are engagingly woven into his always arresting travelogue.

The Afterword contains the results of genetic research conducted in 1996/97 that shows a significant similarity in DNA between Jewish groups, the Lemba and the Hadrami of Terim and Sena. For more detailed and up-to-date information, please consult DNA and Tradition by Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman. The Buba clan of the Lemba has a high frequency of the Y-Chromosome type called the "Cohen Modal Haplotype" which is known to be characteristic of the paternally inherited Jewish priesthood.

For a very thorough ethnographic study of the Lemba, I recommend The Lemba: A Lost Tribe of Israel in Southern Africa by Magdel le Roux. It is a selective comparison between the social and religious practices of early Israel and the Lemba of today.

Journey To The Vanished City contains plates with black & white photographs, maps of Africa and Yemen, 18 pages of notes arranged by chapter and an index. The book is a most engaging read on account of the author's humour, wit and flowing narrative style. There is not one boring moment in this fascinating account of a journey in search of lost origins.

Compelling, uplifting and utterly absorbing, this book must certainly have been inspired by God. It stands alone in a yet-to-be-determined class, and must, in time, surely be regarded as a classic. HIGHLY recommended for readers of all denominations - including unbelievers!

Compelling, uplifting, and utterly absorbing, this book must certainly have been inspired by God! It stands alone in a yet-to-be-determined class, and must, in time, surely be regarded as a classic. HIGHLY recommended for readers of all denominations - including unbelievers!

I have just finished this book. Now I can hardly wait for the new one. The whole story kept me spellbound and I just didn't want it to end. The writer puts a lot of herself into all her books, and this, as well as everything she believes in, is portrayed in some manner in them. That's what makes them so special. I felt as though I knew right where everything was taking place. I could see Johannesburg on the map and just routed out from there.

I know that I know that I know that this is a good book! I have read many others of this period, and I find this one well written, excitingly paced, with charming characters. For me it's on a par with The Sound of Music in making belief in God attractive and real. Well done!

Thank you for being such a good writer. Your thoughts and the way you express them are pure beauty. Your novels contain such valuable ideas and are so well expressed that the deepest ones can reach the soul. Congratulations! And keep on writing. The world needs you!

Having both lived in and travelled throughout Brazil in my youth, as well as having studied Portuguese and Brazilian History, Economics and Sociology in college, I consider myself to be a true "Brazil Nut". A while back, I reviewed a book on Amazon.com, Brazil, Five Centuries of Change, by Thomas Skidmore, which I gave accolades to, and I will applaud Uys' marvelous work Brazil for the same reason: it gives both the novice and the Brazil expert an excellent understanding for the complex history, culture and geography of this little known Latin American giant.

I can not hardly add anything to the great customer reviews. I took this book along on my last trip to Brazil and now I must encourage anyone who is traveling or has a deep interest in Brazil, read this book. Doing so may not only engrave visions of Brazil's history in your mind through an entertaining means, something that history books fail to do but it may also enlighten your understanding of why Brazil is the way it is and what makes Brazilians act the way they do. This is what it did for me. Thank you Mr.Uys

To view a country and write as seen through their people is a difficult task. Errol Uys' re-release of Brazil is a blazing success. This book creates an image and feel for the country that truly leaves a concrete imprint in the mind of the reader. This well-researched book is a facinating epic for fans of historical fiction as well as lovers of non-fiction.

Brazil's history, sociology, ethnicity, politics, etc. are as big and complex as the country size. To capture all these matters in a correct way in just one book is a task that's simply impossible. However, I feel that Errol Lincol Uys knew that, and what he has done in his book is to create a "big picture"of Brazil, and that was the right thing to do. His research and knowledge of the portuguese language are impressive for a non-brazilian, although there are many mistakes, in both aspects. When these mistakes were relative to the language, I found them completely normal, because portuguese is a very difficult and complexe language, even more difficult for someone who comes from a non-latin-speaking country. When the mistakes were relative to brazilian history and its further development, I was angry at first, but then I realised that Uys, as a foreigner, had access mostly to the "normal" and "adjusted" history of my country. Every country has its "adjusted" history, the history full of martyrs, dramatic situations, sword duels, fights for freedom, etc. That's the history that Uys tells his readers.

One other thing. As many authors dealing with the fictionalized history of a country, Uys makes a common mistake. He simply ignores the latest century. As a consequence, the book pratically ends at the turn of the twentieth century, and many interesting and important things have happened in Brazil in the XX century are left behind: Getulio Vargas, the transition from an agrarian to an industrialized country, the military dictatorship and many, many more. Of course, as I said before, it's impossible to completely cover an entire country's history in just one book, but "Brazil" could be two- or three-hundred pages longer and it would not be better or worse, just more complete.

So, in the end, "Brazil" is a good start for someone who is interested in the country. The book is mostly accurate and well researched, but it's just a gimpse of what Brasil really is.

Grade 8.3/10

Having lived in and travelled throughout Brazil, as well as having studied Portuguese, Brazilian sociology and Brazilian economics in college, I consider myself to be a true "Brazil Nut"...On Amazon.com, I have highly recommended Brazil, 5 Centuries of Change, by Thomas Skidmore, and now I will highly recommend Brazil by Erol Lincoln Uys for mostly the same reasons...it gives both the novice and the Brazil expert a true feeling for the fascinating history, culture and geography of this little known giant of Latin America. I especially like the final updated chapter which brings the reader up to the 500th anniversary of Pedro Cabral's 1500 Discovery of Brazil.

It came in good time and in great condition. I recommend it with no reservations.

I'm new to Economics and have done very well in the class so far because the book does such a good job explaining complex economic principles. My Professor follows the book exactly. He even uses the slides provided by the publisher. The student section the publisher provides is awesome too. It has flashcards, practice tests, powerpoint slides, etc.

One doesn't often come across a textbook that is as well written as this. I was able to understand the material; it presented everything clearly. The language/voice used was engaging, humorous, and easy to understand. I wish more textbooks were like this one. I give it an A.

This is one of the clearest--and certainly the most interesting--college textbooks I've ever had! I'm an older student returning to school and had to take econ as a prerequisite for an MBA program. I wasn't looking forward to it--tried it once in college years ago and dropped it because both book and class were so boring! I love this class (online, so no professor even!) and look forward to doing the reading each week. My school uses a "customized" version with with only about 2/3 of the chapters, and I'm buying the entire book so I can read the rest of it. Highly recommended!

This is a great book for Beginners in Economics. It has side notes and just about everything is explained very well. Perfect for the Econ101 Course.

A thriller and historical, - this was a page turner. A very interesting expose of South Africa during apartheid.

When we see what's going on now in Iraq in terms of abuse of prisoners, it doesn't sound too different from what happened in this novel, A TELLING TIME. There seemed to be no hope in South Africa then, but as one reads this book, it becmes apparent that it was possible to reconcile. Perhaps we can hope for such a miracle here.

What a wonderful novel, and so visual that you feel you are in the room with the characters. Glynnis Hayward has created a page-turning novel that helps you understand South Africa during apartheid. Read this book!

Once I had started reading A Telling Time by Glynnis Hayward, I could not put the book down. The story line is gripping: it not only made me much more aware of South Africa during the 1970's and how brutal the police system was for opponents of the government, it questioned the horror that humans can inflict on each other. The lessons learned from the story apply much more broadly than apartheid South Africa. The book helped me understand vividly how undemocratic regimes with security apparatus that has no limit to its power can exercise control and terror over its citizens. It did so with chilling descriptions of torture, brutality and deception yet kept me hooked with the courage of people who defied the system at great personal cost. This is a must read

I was fortunate to hear Ms Hayward speak at a book group meeting recently. I had already been impressed by the book and felt even more so after the meeting. This book has you gasping in horror and crying, yet even at odd moments laughing. The characters are so real and the subject matter so grim; they're a real reminder of what fear can do to warp reasoning. It seems to me that those horrors of 1970s South Africa; loss of individual's freedom, and abuse of power, are things that re-visit again and again in different times and places. Sometimes they are very close to home.

This was actually my first experience with Doris Lessing, tho I've heard of her for years. Her picture of the So. African experience was quite revealing but I got a little tired of the analysis of those who joined the communist movement. It seems that though she worked as an activist, she never really
'bought' the doctrine, to her credit. But she seems to have a need to over analyse the motives. It seems to me that most of the people were just trying to improve the social ills of the time and were taken in by the communist rhetoric. The writing was good enough to keep me reading even though I wasn't too happy with the her bohemian attitude; abandoning her children, taking successive lovers.... I respect her intellect but not her morals.
I am not inclined to look for the second installment.

Doris Lessing has led such an interesting life, and writing a diary all the time. She writes of a time completely foreign to me, living a history of the changes in Southern Afica. I find her autobiography a great read, and prefer it to her novels. Interesting and moving, and explains much about her!

This is a hard-hitting piece of autobiography. Lessing looks at her parents and their world of colonial mastery from the point of view of her younger, increasingly disenchanted self. Lessing was gathering steam in those years, to emerge as one of the prominent novelists of the post-war era. In this, the first of a two-volume autobiography, she is beginning to grow critical of her parents, colonialism, white supremacy, men - her husband in particular - and just beginning to flirt for a short time with the great experiment in group-think of the period known as Communism. She falls for it for a time, but not for long. It will take her a while, but she finally emerges along with George Orwell as the most articulate critic of this mindless, toxic form of self-imposed mental slavery. She writes of her fellow-traveling, communist-sympathizing friends as silly people, which strikes me as as good a way to think of them as any. Lessing provides, along with her political autobiography, a lovely evocation of Africa, the landscape and people, about whom she wrote as a young novelist and to whom she has continued to refer throughout her long and continuing career as a writer.

This is a candid autobiography with as main themes love, sex (good sex, as Doris Lessing calls it, is a right for everybody) and politics in South-Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) ruled by a blank minority.
It is a gripping, moving and realistic picture, wherein the author tries to find answers to personal and more general human questions: why was she so outspoken rebellious and, on the contrary, so strictly loyal to the communist movement?
Why are people fighting relentlessly each other, and on the other hand, striving for happiness?
Are the people of her generation all children of World War I? Why was her father a freemason?

This book is written like an irresistible waterfall. Not to be missed.

Under My Skin

Doris Lessing's autobiography traces her political and emotional development from her earliest childhood memories to her growing, overwhelming, disenchantment with provincial (as she saw it) small town life. "Small town" life for her was pre-WWII Salisbury in the (then) British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Salisbury was a complacent capital city of 10,000 white settlers in a country the size of Spain.
Lessing is quick to debunk the myth of the prosperous, close knit, white farming community - poverty was a real fact of life both for blacks and whites. Her most vivid childhood memories are of escaping from the family home and off into the limitless veld. The emptiness of the veld parallels her youthful emptiness and her growing convictions that the communist party represents a real hope for the world.
The book, a masterpiece of autobiographical writing, is brutally honest in parts and wilfully obscure in others. Some of her emotional mistakes are hardly glanced at (leaving her first two children, for example) but others (the joys of being part of a fast, hard drinking sect, embracing radical politics) are wonderfully engaging. Reading her thoughts you could be forgiven for thinking that the "party" was the only opposition to conservative white rule in Salisbury. This is what makes her book so appealing, her supreme skill as a novelist allowing us to enter the heady world of rushed meetings, leftist newspaper deliveries, drinks on the sports club verandah and back in time to find the cook still waiting to prepare supper. Naturally it couldn't last and Lessing is far too intelligent to think that that is all there is to life. The book ends in 1949 as she arrives in London, apprehensive and hopeful in the capital city of her parents.
This is more than a `who-did-what' from a long time ago, times and dates are (probably deliberately) rarely mentioned. It is the personalities and the ideas - most of all the ideas - sliding from youthful enthusiasm to mature realism which fuse the book with life and vitality. `Under My Skin', published in 1992, is that rare thing, a candid autobiography written by a consummate novelist with skills to spare. Doris Lessing is a national treasure.

This is the best book on the history of the Afrikaners despite its shortcommings. It is ironic that the policy of apartheid, which made Afrikaners a household name and a single Afrikaans word, a derogative international slogan, receives only 50 pages covering. In a timeline of their history this is befitting, although one might criticize it. Yet, one must also remember that Giliomee as sociologist published numerous books on the evils of apartheid. What is more dissapointing, is that he skipped a whole generation, who grew up on the renegate protest newspaper "Vrye Weekblad" and who rebelled with the rock music of the Voëlvry movement, his focus being too much on politicians and intellectuals.

This is a wonderful new full account of the Afrikaner people of South Africa. This narrative history ranges from the first Dutch settlements to the post-apartheid era. It covers the Great Trek, the Zulu Wars and gives special attention to the harsh treatment of the Afrikaners at the hands of the British during the Boer War, in which many were forced into the worlds first concentration camps. A very fluid history and one of the only books to focus on the history of the Afrikaners as a people and a culture. The author is an eminent South African Historian, and an original fighter against Apartheid, yet he argues passionately to explain the reasons the Afrikaners, their nationalists having come to power in 1948, choose apartheid over majority rule. Important leaders are revealed such as Mr. Smuts, Mr. Botha and Mr. De Klerk as well as insights into Mandela and Mbeki's rule. A must read for scholars of south Africa and those interested in Apartheid, its creation and consequences.

A wonderful book and the first of its kind to bring the Afrikaner historical experience up to date. From their beginnings as Dutch colonizers to their Brutal wars with the Zulu as they trekked northward to escape British imperialism. The Dutch of Africa became a hardened and embittered people. As they grew from a paltry group of colonists to become their own tribe, whose roots in S. Africa predate the migration of the Zulu, they also became hardened against those who wanted to crush them, namely the British and the more viscous of S. Africa natives. This book tells the tale of a people between two worlds, on one hand the African world of the Natives and the European of the imperialists. In the end the Afrikaans, being so numerous and having no country to call home could not simply move, the way so many whites did when fleeing black nationalism in Africa. The Afrikaners became victims of their own situation, although the first to suffer the horrors of the concentration camp, and although a poor and starving people in 1900 they grew to dominate S. Africa, and many opposed helping the English in WWII. A marvelous account that brings to life the history of the region this is a muct read for anyone interested in Africa, Aparthied or colonialism's consequences.

This fascinating book is subtitled, "Biography of a People," and it certainly lives up to it. The book follows the history of the Boers of South Africa, from their arrival in the seventeenth century, through to the final collapse of apartheid and beyond (the book having been published in 2003). Along the way, the reader is treated to an in-depth and yet highly readable history that makes South African history come alive in an exciting and highly informative way.

I must say, this book is nothing short of a tour de force! I have read several books on South Africa, and I must admit that I was at first intimidated by this book's size and appearance, which convinced me that it was a school book. But, while this book is eminently useful as a school book, it is still highly readable, making South Africa's history interesting. It covers many details without sounding dry and academic.

So, while I have read several books on South Africa's history, I can easily say that this is the best one that I have read so far. If you are interested in South Africa and the Boers, then this is the best book you can get on the subject. I give this book my highest recommendations!

Nog nooit het ek geskiedenis so pakkend ervaar nie. Die boek lees soos 'n roman wat jy net nie kan neersit nie. En dit laat allerhande vrae -- dit bly jou by. Lees dit!