Africa Books

I bought this for my daughter who is a graduating biologist with a strong interest in mammals. She loves it and has requested several other volumes in the set for birthday or christmas. I've spent some time with it and it almost exceeds description. The pencil drawings (by the author, also an artist) are definitive, the coverage is exhaustive, and there is but one problem. The whole set, of which this is just one volume, is slowly going out of print. Grab them while you can; used they sell for MORE than new, if you can find them at all.

As a professional Wildlife Artist, my field includes painting, sculpture, and taxidermy.

This makes all of the "East African Mammals" series of books by Jonathan Kingdon an absolute necessity. The text gives a wonderful insight into the natural history as well as the historical ancestry of the majority of East Africa's wild children.

But even more, it is Mr. Kingdon's exquisite pencil renderings of the individual species as well as the structure of their musculature, that make these books so special.

It will be funny to those who have never seen an animal without its' hide on, to see how some predators - including the hyena, and leopard - look without their coat of fur. For instance, the anatomical study of the Sidestriped Jackal will remind the reader of a popular Chihuahua pitch-man ... er, dog!

These musulature drawings, in turn, are further enhanced by deeper dissection-like illustrations revealing the deeper muscle structures responsible for much of the movement and support for the mammal in question. These types of drawings are especially fascinating in the Large Mammals volume, wherein the trunk of the elephant and the mouth structure of the hippopotamus are visually dissected to provide a greater insight into these structures, and their performance in the animal.

The books in this series are therefore especially indispensable to the Wildlife Restorer (taxidermist) as a guide to anatomy that we rarely get to see "in-the-flesh" as it were.

I can, therefore, wholeheartedly recommend this series of books to anyone who cares enough about their chosen field of art, to pursue all ends to collect as much reference material as possible.

These books are an excellent addition to the wildlife artists' library.

I love my Jon Kingdon..the guy just draws so well and reading his accounts and observation you can tell he has a love for the animals he draws.Just amazing.Luckily I bought my copy when it was "only" 50 bucks, not sure why its so expensive now but I must say it's almost worth the new price.

As a professional Wildlife Artist, my field includes painting, sculpture, and taxidermy.

This makes all of the "East African Mammals" series of books by Jonathan Kingdon an absolute necessity. The text gives a wonderful insight into the natural history as well as the historical ancestry of the majority of East Africa's wild children.

But even more, it is Mr. Kingdon's exquisite pencil renderings of the individual species as well as the structure of their musculature, that make these books so special.

These musculature drawings, in turn, are further enhanced by deeper dissection-like illustrations revealing the deeper muscle structures responsible for much of the movement and support for the mammal in question. These types of drawings are especially fascinating in this, the Large Mammals volume, wherein the trunk of the elephant and the mouth structure of the hippopotamus are visually dissected to provide a greater insight into these structures, and their performance in the animal.

Also covered in this Large Mammals volume, is the Zebra and the Giraffe. Among the extensive coverage, the zebras' anatomy is not only printed, but it is also illustrated in all its' stripe variations, as well as its' ancestral evolutionary development. Included with the giraffe, we get a look at the muscles, as well as its' coat and how the predator sees - or more correctly - doesn't see its' quarry!

The books in this series are therefore especially indispensable to the Wildlife Restorer (taxidermist) as a guide to anatomy that we rarely get to see "in-the-flesh" as it were.

I can, therefore, wholeheartedly recommend this series of books to anyone who cares enough about their chosen field of art, to pursue all ends to collect as much reference material as possible.

These books are an excellent addition to the wildlife artists' library.

Dr. Finch is a scholar whose work is well research and wonderfully written. I first ran across this book about five years ago and this seminal work has impacted my life every since. The author discusses the humankind's earliest cultures and the roots of Christianity. The great thing in this book is that the collection of essays gives the reader a broad overview of the history of humankind by looking at our myths, cosmologies, and stories about the universe.

Delving into the human psyche while also meshing solid scientific facts and findings is one thing. But writing in a clear fashion that encompasses the technical aspect of the work is another thing. Dr. Finch has a gift for sliding humor and humanity into a subject some may deem as dry. An underrated, underappreciated work from one of my favorite scholars--I recommend this book with the highest regard.

This book provided me with a sense of my heritage that I probably would not have been able to find eslewhere. The author is very knowledgeable about the subject and clearer lays it out for all to see. I really recommend this book for all cultures and races to read.

Egypt in Africa is a great book based on a great museum exhibit and it's good to see it available through amazon.com. The book avoids the two popular extremes of denying all of the African roots and setting of Egyptian civilization and of claiming that anything and everything worthwhile in western civilization was African in origin. (This book makes it clear that Africa contributed so much that it's foolish to discredit its valid claims by exaggeration.) Instead the book is a calm, objective, and persuasive as well as readible and clear look at Egypt in its African context. If you want to understand the "big picture" when it comes to ancient Egypt, you really need this book. A professor of art history.

This is a timely and unique voice of sanity in the wake of the (shrill) debates still stirring over Black Athena. It is an attractively illustrated and informative volume on its own. As a bonus, it is a great bridge to further inquiry. It should be in EVERY high school and university library.

I LOVE THIS BOOK! It told me so many interesting facts, people, and other things about Egypt. It explained to me how their drawings and writings were made, and how they were formed, and I studied it real carefully: If every book was like this, People would be a million times smarter than real life! If I had to choose my favorite Geography book, THIS WOULD BE THE NUMBER ONE CHOICE!

Egyptian Dynasties,is a very interesting book. It tells a lot about the Egyptians and satisfies your curiosities. It tells you about how the different rulers lived,what they did,and how they affected their subjects lives. Joyce Haynes describes the different dynasties with great detail and gives you the facts. She knows what she's writing about.

An excellent book, well written by an excellent and knowledgeable author. a must for anyone having an interest in Ancient Egypt

Watterson's book provides a fascinating, and very readable, introduction to the ancient land of Egypt. I couldn't put it down! And, our local library can't keep it on the shelves.

Watterson combines the best of the classical authors (Herodotus, Strabo, etc) with the best of current scholarship. She has a unique ability to focus on what is most important and interesting in the long span (5000 years!) of Egyptian history.

This book is very well written, very rich in information, and truly a pleasure to read. It is one of the very best histories that I have ever read. I believe that it will soon become a classic textbook, reference, and popular work. I recommend it without reservation to anyone - high school or college student, scholar, or general reader - who wants an excellent history of Egypt from ancient to modern times.

It is great novel written by Dr. Nmutaka Okongwu. Reading this novel will teach anyone about the lessons in life and especially for those who are living abroad and now coming back to their homeland. It is well written and concise. Read it, and you will learn some valuable lessons.

Nmutaka Okongwu has done a fabulous job describing the different variables that play such a large role in the evolution of the "Ekuke Syndrome". It is truly wonderful how this book shows Afam dealing with the end results of the "Ekuke Syndrome" in the future, while also taking us back in time, through the wonderful story of Aro Ugani that plays out the origins and series of events from which the Syndrome evolved. I definitely recommend this book. It is wonderfully written and flows very well through time (you will see what I mean). I believe many have seen or lived through the ill effects of what has become of societies that looked outward instead of inward. The "Ekuke Syndrome" brings this to light and makes you think. Many will be able to relate some part of their lives to the lessons taught in the book.

I think this book is awesome! You've gotta read it! It impresses me so much, it makes me feel like I'm in Nigeria right now! Find it, buy it, and read it. That's my motto for it! You might find it intresting. It gives you an idea of what fun and enchantment you can have when your speaking the language of Yoruba in a city that can understand you. It gives you an idea of what . . . wait a minute. I'm reveiwing. I'm done here!

I think that this book was fun and I learned many valuable lessons from it that help me with everyday life. I love magic and extraordinary things so I enjoyed this book. I loved the pictures and as a Yoruban living in the USA it made me think of home. Teniola is an excelent writer. I have read many of her other stories about the yoruba culture and so I enjoyed her book alot.

It has always been more than a little embarrassing that scholars of political thought who purport to address "universal" and "timeless" questions of political life have displayed such provincial disregard for political texts, thinkers, and traditions that are located beyond the shores of Western Europe and North America. It is no less embarrassing that so many contemporary representatives of this "tradition" of political thought have either ignored powerful religio-political movements in the "West" and "non-West," or have sought to interpret those movements from within the tired and familiar analytic frameworks that have dominated Anglo-American political science for at least the past half-century. In this impressive and remarkably ambitious book, Roxanne Euben makes considerable headway in correcting both of these parochial tendencies, while also casting considerable light on the nature and significance of Islamic fundamentalist challenges to the commitments of Western rationalism.

As its subtitle indicates, this book explores and analyzes Islamic fundamentalist critics of modern rationalism. What distinguishes Euben's analysis from the torrent of recent work on this topic is the extraordinary breadth of knowledge and sophistication of understanding that she brings to her topic (Euben reads Arabic and has fully absorbed the relevant literatures in social and political theory, comparative politics, and Middle Eastern Studies). This virtually unparalleled scope and depth of knowledge enables her to detect important limitations in prevailing social scientific explanations of fundamentalism and to develop a variety of unique perspectives of her own. Euben, for example, persuasively argues that most social scientific studies employ models of instrumental rationality that exclude from analysis the substantive ideas that animate fundamentalist thought and action. As a result, they tend to view fundamentalist movements as an irrational, "convulsive reflex" prompted by one or another condition (or combination of conditions) of modernity itself: urbanization, commercialization, industrialism, etc. Rather than starting with a set of methodological directives that dictate a conception of the Islamic fundamentalist as an "irrational rational actor," Euben develops what she terms a "dialogic model of interpretation." This model, she argues, "places fundamentalist ideas at the center of understanding yet insists that there is a perspective sufficiently distant from that of the participants to, first, recognize material conditions that constrain and enframe their actions, and , second, critique and evaluate their experience of the world" (p. 25).

Using this model to excellent effect, Euben explores the work of key nineteenth and twentieth century Islamist thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afgani, Muhammad `Abduh, and, particularly, Sayyid Qutb. Writing against stereotyped, "orientalist" images of Islamist thought as consisting of fanatical, incoherent responses to conditions of modernity, Euben carefully charts the ways in which writers like Qutb develop views of Enlightenment rationalism that, far from being unintelligible or pathological, reveal strong resonances with leading "Western" critics of modernity such as Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, Robert Bellah, Alasdair MacIntyre, Daniel Bell, and Richard John Neuhaus. This, of course, is not to say that Islamic critics of modernity and rationalism articulate views that are identical to those of Western students of politics--if this were truly the case, it would be difficult to imagine what might be gained (apart from shoring up the conviction that non-Western writers have nothing original to say) by engaging them. Rather, Euben argues, writers like Qutb and `Abduh are distinctive participants in a common conversation about "the leaching of meaning from modern life" (p. 155). By simultaneously reconstructing and revealing a conversation about modern rationalism that includes conservatives and participatory democrats, communitarians and critical theorists, postmodernists and (Christian and Islamic) fundamentalists, Euben not only undercuts the thesis that differences between Western and Islamic thought are so dramatic that any real conversation is impossible, but also dissolves the easy opposition (invoked by everyone from Samuel Huntington to prominent neoconservatives in the Bush administration) between Western and non-Western political thought. In short, she does a tremendous service to contemporary debates about Islamist challenges to modern rationalism by showing precisely what is familiar and distinctive about them.

While many readers might be primarily interested in Euben's careful and sophisticated explication of leading Islamist thinkers, her book also constitutes an important contribution to what might broadly be called "methodological" debates about the nature of political theory. Drawing on the growing literature in what is termed "comparative political theory," Euben argues that political theory should again become what it once was, specifically, a truly comparative enterprise. More than any other recent study, this book exhibits the clear advantages of an approach to questions of political thought that engages the full range of political practice and experience. It should therefore be "Exhibit A" in future discussions of the value of comparative political theory.

As noted previously, the events of the past several years have produced an overwhelming number of books that purport to engage either Islamist thought or non-Western perspectives more generally. To be frank, much of this work, written by both distinguished public intellectuals and younger scholars, is embarrassingly bad. Composed quickly and without adequate knowledge of the traditions and experiences (or, importantly, facility in the languages though which those traditions and experiences are transmitted) the authors set out to assess, they are at best unhelpful and at worst dangerously distortive. Euben's book, on the other hand, manifests none of these deficiencies. It is an intellectual tour-de-force, the product of a first-rate mind that has devoted itself to the difficult task of understanding the diverse currents of thought that it engages. If one is interested in a reading a highly sophisticated discussion of Islamic fundamentalist thought, one that stimulates rather than deadens reflection on a host of extraordinarily important issues, there is no better place to start than this book.

For any reader seriously interested in a sophisticated, nuanced, and intensely informative analysis of a political and religious movement and culture that now dominates the world stage, Prof. Roxanne Euben's "Enemy In The Mirror" is a bracing, eye-opening work of depth and power. Euben examines Islamic Fundamentalism on its own terms, and with its own series of definitions and directions, rather than opts for the distinctly "Western" reading that so reflexively and arrogantly permeates so much discussion of this subject. It's the difference between the author who is content to point a finger at her subject and say "they're different!" and an author of Euben's intelligence and caliber, who finds it infinitely more compelling to ask, "WHY are they different?" and then goes about trying to answer the question and , perhaps more importantly, understand the answer. Enriching and essential reading.

This book is a product of a person who does not know what he is saying. Please nobody should weast his time reading this ethiopist ideas.

Excellent presentation. The book focuses more on passing on facts (excelent footnotes and appendix) to the reader than giving analysis of events and their significance from the author's point of view. It definitely sheds a new perspective of the beginning of the Ethio-Eritrean war. There is not much about TPLF, but there's an interesting coverage of rise and fall of ELF and the rise of EPLF. As strange as it may sound, the book also makes you appreciate that the war was carried out as it was. It makes you appreciate the Ethio-Eritrean civil society.