Africa Books

Wow I don't believe it, Amazon has the same wonderful edition I borrowed from the library. I've been looking everywhere for this big 8 tape set read by Wanda McCaddon. My daughters and I felt this was just an incredible story, and the reader they picked made all the difference in bringing it to life. I think this is unabriged version, so don't settle for anything else, especially if your family is going to listen to it. The story is just so interesting it just moves along fine, don't worry about it being too long, you will wish it was longer!

A wonderful book about everyday life in Africa around 1914 through the eyes of a young child. Every page is filled with wonderful details of the customs of the African tribal people, the English characters are very well defined and interesting. The love of the animals, the tribulations of English settlers who have to deal with lazy unreliable workers,the lack of medical services, everything is so real, it is like being there. Humour is also part of the wonderful, sometimes poetic style of the author.

Bleedin' shame nobody has bothered to review this book (as of my writing); it's one of the best books about Saudi Arabia (and Bedouin culture) I've ever read, though it is light reading.

Vintage marketed this book (now out of print, it seems) as "international travel," which seems to me a pretty dubious classification when you read what I say below, although since the guy spends most of his time wandering around a foreign country I guess I understand their reasons.

But it's really a kooky adventure story . . .

The plot is as follows: Walker (an on-again, off-again ESL teacher in Saudi Arabia during the boom years of the 70s and 80s), has heard many times from his students about the custom of "sexual hospitality" as practiced in some regions of Saudi Arabia, such as in the Asir (just north of Yemen).

The idea of such a custom is that travelers (even "kuffar," non-believers) who are visiting into certain villages are put up in a house for three days and nights, no questions asked. Perks supposedly include bed, breakfast, and THE SERVICES OF A FEMALE.

Anthropologists (and many Arabists) swear the custom was not a myth -- up until about the 1960s, when television helped to unify the country's mores, bringing them more in line with those of Riyadh.

Naturally such a free-love custom is directly contrary to Wahhabi Islam, of course.

Anyhow, Walker, the narrator, has been hearing about this custom for years. His students from the Asir (privately) swear to him it's not a myth, and students from other areas of the Kingdom angrily deny that such a custom ever (or could currently) exist.

Well, on his last tour in KSA, Walker resolves to make an odyssey from Jedda down to the Asir, ostensibly to visit a former student but really to see if he can work himself into a situation where he is a recipient of this fabled "sexual hospitality."

In other words, he spends the book basically trying to get a free ride on a Saudi chick.

Well, I won't tell you how it ends, but that plot line is what Walker uses to hang his observations about the Kingdom, about Arabs, Muslims, Saudis, and the rapid modernization of their world -- and what it is like for a Westerner to live and travel there.

Most of the books about Saudi Arabia are either about how the Kingdom supports terror, about the coming revolution, about the oil wealth, etc.

Not this one.

It's witty, amusing, and incredibly well-written. What Walker was doing spending his time as an ESL teacher is beyond me.

It's neither overly-sympathetic to the Saudis, nor uselessly over-critical.

In fine, a balanced, insightful, and deftly-written book.

Suddenly, what seemed a secretive, even a sinister, alien civilization became comprehensible and human." (p 174)

What a wonderful maxim Mr. Walker used, which aptly describes his entire book. As the only other reviewer, "Freston," of this gem of a book said: Most of the books about Saudi Arabia are either about how the Kingdom supports terror, about the coming revolution, about the oil wealth, etc."... in other words, so many books that theorize, and depict the "other" in negative terms, often by individuals who have never been to the Kingdom. Much that is written is also shear fantasy, masquerading as insight. But this book has the authentic ring from one who places his own culture's faults on an equal footing with those of others.

There is a tongue-in-cheek quest that ties together Mr. Walker's tale, his journey across the Kingdom from West to East in the early `80's: a search for the custom of Arabia which predates Islam, from what is considered the Jahaliya, "the time of darkness," when a widow was given to a male guest for three nights. Was there still a place so remote, so high and wild in the Asir, where this might still be possible? In this pursuit, as the guest of one of his ESL student's, to attend his wedding, he did things that probably only 10 other Western expats had ever done - such as ride in a crowded Toyota land cruiser, with the Sudanese and Egyptians, on a long journey from Jeddah high into the Asir.

With the exotic backdrop of his tour, and the cast of characters that he meets along the way, including old Saudi acquaintances, Walker makes numerous original philosophical observations on the respective cultures. He savagely and very wittedly skewers the foibles of Saudi society, which certainly would ban the book for sale in the Kingdom. But his strength is that he invariably compares their faults with the West's own, and sums up his agnostic position: "Don't get me wrong. I do not consider Islam any more a threat to mankind than Christianity or Judaism; in my view, no religion has the edge, in either absurdity or potential for mischief, over any other." (p 190) Another comparison is the relative merits of "repression," as espoused by Freud, and the sickness it brings on in society: "In Arabia the Repressed an unbalanced person is a sight so rare as to be shocking, whereas in permissive New York you are afraid to meet the eyes of half the people on the street for fear of encountering unrepressed madness." ( p 196)

In drawing his honest portrait, he aptly indicates the central reason why much of the West has a negative image of the country: "... just as it takes no Goebbels to appreciate the value of a propaganda so effective the before I ever laid eyes on an Arab, I despised them. It helps, when you take someone's land, to picture the owner as undeserving of it anyway." (p 135) (the American Indian would fully appreciate this sentiment)

As a weakness, I think of the authors of yore who visited Arabia, Walker placed too heavy a reliance on Charles M. Doughty, a crotchety traveler from whom Walker extracted the book's title. Walker repeatedly quotes him, yielding limited insights, burnished slightly only due to their age.

Towards the end of the book, his "quest" still unfulfilled, he is rather provocatively challenged by a woman who says: "You weren't looking in the right place." Likewise, if the slew of Saudi-bashing books has left you unfulfilled in your search for the real Kingdom, perhaps this is the right place to start. Surely a country that is spending three trillion dollars on the so-called war on terror can afford a few dollars to have this book re-issued, for the rich insights it renders of those who "live on the other side of the river," as well as ourselves.

The stories in this collection are vignettes of South African lives masterfully written. I was very impressed with how well developed the characters are. I read this book for a grad course under a grueling deadline, but still found it very enjoyable.

Njabulo Ndebele's "Fools and Other Stories" is masterfully written. An enchanting blend of traditional South African storytelling and riveting modern prose, Ndebele poetically tells of the post-apartheid struggle that plagues his nation. A must read for any fan of Coetzee or Gordimer.

You can't imagine how much detail and information there is in this book. It must have taken this gentleman several lifetimes to actually visit all of the places about which he so accurately describes. This is far better than the Lonely Planet book on Tunisia in my opinion, especially for people who hope to travel to this progressive nation that is very "American friendly" and quite a bargain in most ways.

Footprint Tunisia is without question the best travel book I've ever used. It's information was accurate to the letter in every case. Background history of the country and it's ancient colonizers was exhaustive compared to the standards of most guide books. Perhaps most impressive is the pertinence of the information to every type of traveller, budget to luxe. The clever and pointed opinions were always on target. The writer did not hesitate to give sly negative reviews where applicable. "Lonely Planet" and "Let's Go" both offer good information but have target readers and leave out the needs of many of us as well as frequently providing only rudimentary information. With Footprint you can throw out all the other guidebooks or just avoid buying them entirely, that's how exhaustive I found the Tunisia entries to be. I've used many guide books, Eyewitness, Access (awesome in the original versions, especially for walking tours and architectural sites,food and shops)and Fodor's but these all pale in comparison to Footprint. Where have they been hiding? I've yet to see them on the shelves of those big bookstores in my neighborhood. Bravo to Amazon for carrying them all.

A review of this book has been published in the following journal:

Houle, A. (1999). Book-Review: Foraging for survival: Yearling baboons in Africa. Behavioural Processes. (in press)

This is a story of how eleven juvenile baboons feed themselves. The setting: Amboseli National Park, Kenya. This is, however, much more than a simple story. Throughout, Altmann engages the reader with his elegant analysis - rich with ecological detail - of the costs and benefits primates must negotiate in their daily pursuit of requisite nutrients and energy. Baboons are exemplary eclectic omnivores; still, as Altmann quotes, "there is no such thing as a free lunch." Bearing this in mind, he sets out to evaluate the balancing act baboons must achieve in maximizing nutrient intake, while at the same time minimizing toxic accumulation of plant secondary metabolites.

At the outset, Altmann describes what the baboons ate, how they ate it, and what foods they avoided altogether during the study period (1975-1976). He then identifies what baboons should eat. A foraging strategy is an ultimate endpoint, achieved via an array of potential tactical routes. Altmann evaluates both the feeding tactics and the eclectic foraging strategy of his young baboons by identifying the degree to which they deviate from an optimum model of adaptive feeding traits. The baboons' actual dietary intake is compared to the specifications of adequate and optimal diets; this is done for both an average yearling's diet, as well as on individual variance from the predicted diets.

Deviations from the optimum are viewed as indicators of potential differences in reproductive fitness. Although the feeding data stem from research undertaken in the mid-1970s, Altmann takes advantage of the two succeeding decades to relate differences in juvenile diets to longevity and fitness outcomes later in life. This historical depth is particularly valuable because it tests the model by evaluating whether those baboons that come closer to the optimum as juveniles have higher fitness as adults.

Altmann expands on the extreme selectivity exhibited by baboons, providing details on the toxic load, protein, carbohydrate, water content, and load of various plant species and the manner in which baboons maximize (or minimize) their intake of these food components. Finally, he assesses the anatomical and behavioral attributes that may contribute to making baboons one of the most successful and broadly distributed primate species. To complement the main body of the text, Altmann includes a series of appendices and tables in which he evaluates various methodological and definitional issues relating to calculating feeding bouts and dietary intake. Here, he presents additional detail on diet composition and the nutritional and toxic attributes of plant foods.

The work's emphasis on juvenile feeding behavior is an unusual yet valuable feature. This developmental stage is often overlooked in studies of non-human primate behavior and ecology, despite the fact that this period, and the transition from a milk diet to an adult diet, are undoubtedly critical to our understanding of adult fitness and life history patterns.

However, some caution is warranted: This book was not intended for the casual student of animal feeding behavior, nor for those new to optimal foraging theory. Altmann's models, food intake calculations, and feeding bout formulae are exacting, and quite abstracted from the experience of observing feeding behavior. Before embarking into this volume, non-modelers will have to review the technical terminology that necessarily accompanies Optimization Theory. In addition, I do not view the generalizations (outlined in Chapter Two) based on the relationships among body size, patch size, and dietary selectivity to be particularly illuminating. Too many exceptions to his proposed relationships can be found for such generalizations to be of much explanatory utility.

Nonetheless, this book is destined to become a classic in primate feeding behavior. It is exhaustive in its breadth, a pleasure to read, and sets the standard for amalgamation of modeling theory and ecological observation.

This is an amazing book!
There's much precious informations about Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement period.
Sincerely!Great book.

Ingrid Monson's FREEDOM SOUNDS is the most lucid and perceptive look at jazz and politics during the 1950s and '60s since Scott Saul's Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't (2003). Monson, a Harvard Professor of African American Music, is among a select group of academics who can, without either condescension or dilution, convey important scholarship to readers (such as me) of ordinary intelligence and average education.

As one would expect from a book published by a university press, FREEDOM SOUNDS is meticulously documented, with charts, tables and reproductions of period handbills and posters supplementing 50 pages of endnotes. Yet thanks to Monson's skill, this necessary baggage never outweighs readability.

Throughout, she brings a sure balance of overview and analysis to such developments as the integration of the American Federation of Musicians (which maintained separate white and black union locals into the 1950s everywhere except New York and Detroit), social activism and fund-raising by individual jazz artists, heated debates within the jazz community, the influence of African independence, and jazz's role in the Cold War.

Regarding the latter, Monson's clear-eyed factuality provides a much-needed contrast (and implicit rebuttal) to recent self-serving attempts by radical intellectuals, such as British Marxist Martin Smith and anti-Zionist Gilad Atzmon, to hijack jazz for their revisionist anti-American polemics. In particular, left-wingers have cited the U.S. State Department-sponsored overseas jazz tours from 1956 through 1969 as evidence of America's white bourgeoisie cynically co-opting jazz. To the contrary, Monson reports, the musicians themselves felt they were "extending the reach of jazz to the whole world. They did not view their participation in the program as an aspect of Western cultural imperialism but as an alternative to it. The musicians considered it a great honor to have been selected by the State Department, and representing the United States was something they felt they could do without compromising their integrity." Even Dizzy Gillespie, no chum to Uncle Sam, acknowledged: "I was very honored to have been chosen as the first jazz musician to represent the United States on a cultural mission, and I had a good time."

As Monson sees it, the popular image of "jazz artist as iconoclastic hero, nonconformist, transcendent and self-determining subject, and social critic" is misleadingly oversimplified. "Some forty years after the civil rights movement," she writes, "later generations long for an uncomplicated narrative of heroism and triumph, and many writers are tempted to deliver it." Monson admirably resists that temptation, wisely perceiving that "musicians and activists brought a wide range of human motivation to political engagement."

Ultimately, FREEDOM SOUNDS is itself a call not to social activism, but to deeper understanding by both races. Whites, Monson argues, in fairness shouldn't reject claims of cultural ownership by African Americans, who assert "a privileged relationship to the music by virtue of sharing the deeply personal social experience of racial discrimination." At the same time, blacks must recognize that "the ubiquitousness of black music in American culture has also created a history of non-African American relationships to the music that is no less real or authentic."

"It is my hope," Monson concludes, "that thinking through the complex interaction of race, politics, and music in the years of the civil rights movement and African independence has helped to make unmistakably clear the striving for freedom and dignity that is central to the ethos of this music."

In FREEDOM SOUNDS, Ingrid Monson has not merely made that striving for freedom and dignity clear, she has powerfully translated it from music to words. An astute, acute and sensitive achievement.

I was driven to this book by Spielberg's movie about the Amistad Mutiny.
I was so impressed with the cruelty exposed on the film that I would like to check it in a reliable source.
Suzanne Jurmain's book is very easy to read, once is oriented to the young people at the schools.
It is a good start to the knowledge of this episode and as I mentioned in the title the book, altough not deeply documented, is sufficient enough to assure you that the facts are unfortunately true.

Exploring one of America's darkest chapters, Suzanne Jurmain gives the great gift of truth to all of her readers. Buy this book, today, as a gift for your children and grandchildren. Share with them them the reality of America's ugly flirtation with slavery, and in so doing free them from the streotypes and simplifications which too often pass among us for reality.

Ms. Jurmain chronicles, for a juvenile audience, the story of the Amistad mutiny, so movingly recounted in the movie of the same name. In so doing, she draws upon the original court records and other contemporary documents. Although this is a book for young people, she does not shy away from describing the horrors of the middle passage, or the other institutions associated with slavery. Nor, does Ms. Jurmain give in to the temptation to solely demonize the Europeans associated with the slave trade: she accurately states that many of the slaves were captured and sold by other Africans. Thus, the African diaspora was all the more tragic.

Most importantly, Ms. Jurmain breaks the myth of docile African servitude. Her portrait of Cinque and the other captive's moral courage and willingness to take their futures into their own hands is in keeping with other recent literary and film releases such as "Glory," and "The Tuskeegee Airmen." By telling the truth, Ms. Jurmain helps all of us: no matter what the color of our skin, to see that courage is not limited to any gender or race.

Buy this book for your children and gradchildren. Help them to see the promise of freedom shining through one of America's darkest chapters -- and in the process help them to dream of a brighter tomorrow.

This book is a gorgeous coffee-table volume. It is divided into sections by time periods beginning in the 1840s and continues to the present. Each chapter is introduced with an in-depth discussion of what was happening at that time, then moves to captioned photos. The book is large, 10"x12", and is presented on heavy, high quality paper; a pleasure to hold and look at! My only criticism is that readability was sacrificed for design. The type is very small and, therefore, difficult to read, and the caption reference number below each photo is mircoscopic. Also, even though I'm sure the photos were reproduced perfectly, some are hard to make out (what do I expect for 100+ year old photos!) I recommend this book whether you are interested in this subject, interested in photography or just love beautiful books.

This is an absolutely gorgeous book, very comprehensive and tons of excellent pictures

This is the autobiographical story of a writer in the depths of grief for his sister's death, and depression, who feels the answer lies in Africa. So he packs up himself, his daughter, and his wife (CBS's Lesley Stahl) and heads off to safari in Africa.
He gives a vivid and insightful description of his own internal and external journeys. Along the way he meets some of the giants of research in Africa (Craig Sholley's work with gorillas, Cynthia Moss with elephants, Richard Leakey with early man), and reports their insights into their work and the significance of Africa to each of us.
This out-of-stock book is well worth searching out at your library or book dealer.

The Kirkus review is unfair and off-the-mark.
This is the autobiographical story of writer Aaron Latham in the depths of grief for his sister's death, and depression, who feels the answer lies in Africa. So he packs up himself, his daughter, and his wife (CBS's Lesley Stahl) and heads off to safari in Africa.
He gives a vivid and insightful description of his own internal and external journeys. Along the way he meets some of the giants of research in Africa (Craig Sholley's work with gorillas, Cynthia Moss with elephants, Richard Leakey with early man), and reports their insights into their work and the significance of Africa to each of us.
This out-of-stock book is well worth searching out at your library or book dealer.

I reside in Libreville, Gabon and have not, until now, been able to find much literature about this place in English ... or French for that matter. Then this little gem was published! I take this little book with me everywhere I go, I make a point of consulting it before I plan a trip, ... where to eat in Cocobeach, where to stay in Nyonie, where to shop in Libreville ... it's all in there. I found a couple of phone numbers misprinted, but aside from that, the information on each of the places I have been to is up to date, useful and correct. This book tells it like it is, the good, the bad and the ugly! I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of visiting or living in Gabon.

I actually only visited São Tomé and I have to say that this guide, although short, is very detailed, both in terms of the historical background and of the present. The approach is straightforward and going through the places, and talking with the people, feels very close to what is described in the guide. Sophie did a great job in capturing the county's spirit.