Africa Books

Lovers of good political writing will enjoy this. I was greatly inspired by the first edition of this while I was a college student in the 1980s (when Mr. Mandela was still imprisoned).

Among the highlights are "Bantu Education" (1950s), a look at how the educational system for Black South Africans was designed to produce a class of cheap labor (as a Black South Carolinian, I can relate). Mandela's court speech prior to his imprisonment in 1964 reads like a South African "I Have A Dream" as he eloquently states the case of Black S/Africans and his willingness to be a martyr for that cause. (Check the actual sound recording of this on the CD "The Voice of Nelson Mandela" for the full effect).

Later, we see the level of principle of Mr. Mandela as he spurns offers for freedom under the conditions set by the S/A government in the 80s. We also read his post-release speech as well as his calls for peace among warring factions in S/A.

Makes you wish for eloquent, principled, and effective leaders like this in America. At least it can inspire future generations toward that direction. By all means, read it.

What a bottomless well of encouragement and inspiration one gets from its reading! Nelson Mandela, basing himself on the mass of Black, Colored and Indian, workers, peasants and other democrats of South Africa, was unbreakable at the hands of the horrific, murderous and terrorist system of aparthied. Akin to Nazis Germany, the Jim Crow USA South and Zionist Israel, South Africa enjoyed the backing of the US and British and Israeli governments until it was overthrown.

Joining the African National Congress in 1944 at age 26, he and other youth would lead its transformation from and organization of " gentlemen with clean hands" to the mass revolutionary democratic movement that would lead the revolution over apartheid. Doing so even while in prison for nearly 30 years. He was finally released in 1990 at age 72 and was soon after elected South Africa's president.

For decades, a popular demand in South Africa and around the world was: Free Nelson Mandela! This book does an excellent job of showing just why Mandela was so popular among the masses in his country and so feared and hated by apartheid's rulers. He was a first-class revolutionary who fought for decades for his country's freedom and always believed in the power of the masses of people to make change. This book is so inspiring because you read Mandela in his own words, starting as a student leader in the 1940s to a leader of the African National Congress's armed wing in the 1960s to an internationally known political prisoner in the 1980s. He never gave up and he outlasted the vicious apartheid system. The photos in the book also do a great job of showing what the struggle against apartheid was like.

What a wonderful experience-- reading and studying speeches and documents prepared by Nelson Mandela during five decades of struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa! Here are key documents of the African National Congress, including the Freedom Charter that became the central document of the mass movement that brought down apartheid. Also Mandela's speeches at different stages of the struggle, including historic courtroom addresses when he was on trial for his life; documents Mandela prepared as the apartheid regime was forced to negotiate with him and the ANC in the late 1980s; and his first speeches after he was released from prison in 1990.
These speeches give a vivid reminder of the brutal, racist regime that was apartheid (and we should never forget that the South African regime was a pillar of U.S. domination in Africa from the 1940s on.) Mandela gives us a real feel for the determined, difficult, and courageous struggle of millions of people who never accepted submission to apartheid and the world-wide importance of the fight for a democratic, nonracial South Africa. And you see truly inspiring leadership in the persons of Mandela and his fellow leaders in the ANC.
Don't miss the 32-pages of photos that really help bring this rich struggle to life as well!

This scholarly and thoroughly impressive history of the Nile River provides a fine blend of geography and history as it surveys the river's importance to local lives and world events. From its various ecological niches and environments to the special history of its evolution and importance to mankind, The Nile is filled from cover to cover with a wealth of lively and articulate description.

There are a lot of great books on the Nile; Emil Ludwig's classic and Alan Whitehead's come to mind. This is another, updated version, that fills in a lot of the blanks left by the earlier books. It is well written and up-to-date. The emphasis is on politics and history but the author also appreciates the physical wonder that is the Nile. The author spends a lot of time talking about this place and that place, but the book is full of excellent maps to guide the geographically perplexed. It is a good read for the adventurous as well as those interested in the challenges facing modern Africa.

By Robert I. Rotberg

The life-giving Nile of lower Egypt trickles first from two springs in Burundi and Rwanda and then meanders 4,238 miles as the White Nile through great equatorial lakes; loses itself in tangled and difficult swamps; tortuously emerges to run freely toward its confluence with the much more powerful, if shorter, Blue Nile from Ethiopia; and then flows over cataracts and dams through the great desert to the Mediterranean Sea.

Over five millenniums, the nutrient- and silt-laden Nile floodwaters enabled agriculture and civilization to flourish all along its lower reaches. When the annual summer flood failed, however, the northern Sudan and all of classical and modern Egypt suffered hideously.

Collins links the dark ages of dynastic Egypt and the successes of invading outsiders to those sometimes prolonged periods when the Nile withheld its renewing gift. In turn, those dry spells reflected shifts in the rainfall patterns of equatorial Africa and highland Ethiopia, not - as the Egyptians always feared - to the manipulative scheming of Ethiopian monarchs or African chieftains.

There were many efforts to measure the flows of the Nile, and then to harness it effectively. Taming the Nile, the quixotic goal of administrators from early times, led to the first small dams, and in the early 20th century to dams in the Sudan. President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Aswan High Dam of 1970, with its 300-mile lake and its ancillary dam at Roseires in the Sudan, were together intended to regulate the river forever, smoothing out the years of high and low water. But the mighty Nile refused to capitulate, and the impoundment of its waters has led to great silting and weakening of the dams, the impoverishment of Egyptian agriculture, unexpected disease, and unanticipated economic and social consternation.

Collins's seamless biography captures the soul of a river that is both a result of and a continuing influence upon Africa's geology, climate, history, peoples, economy, and politics. Collins roams over the 2 million-square-mile basin of the Nile - the smaller rivers, the large and tiny lakes, and the glacier-capped mountain ranges - and writes movingly of the glory and challenges faced by the immense cascade of water as it makes its way over myriad waterfalls and past pumping stations, villages, towns, and cities to its ultimate destination. He also captures the trials and triumphs of the Nile's sometimes human- assisted passage through the Sudd - a vast eddying swamp-like mass of lagoons and channels that long defied explorers and entrepreneurs as they attempted to follow the White Nile south into equatorial regions.

Counterintuitively, more of the merged waters of the Nile come from the Blue branch, not the much longer and more tortuous White system. The Blue starts higher than the White, at 9,000 feet, and then rushes into shallow Lake Tana. From shores ringed by Coptic Christian monasteries, the Blue carves a great arc through the lava dikes and sandstone plateaus of western Ethiopia, strengthened by three significant and many minor tributaries until it leaves the highlands and crosses into the Sudan as a source of regular refreshment.

As in any great biography, there are diversions off the main channel. Collins swoops readers into the Baro Salient, that riverine mapmaking mistake that thrusts Ethiopia into the southern Sudan, where commerce coursed clandestinely across borders. He takes us on a fascinating search for 15-foot canaries - not in John Williams' standard "Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa" - high up in the Mountains of the Moon (the Ruwenzori Range). And he supplies unexpected facts. For instance, as mighty as the Nile may be, its volume of fresh water delivered to the Mediterranean is only 2 percent of the total of the Amazon River and 15 percent of that of the Mississippi River. For much of its 160 million-year history, the Nile emptied into the Indian Ocean; only in comparatively recent geological times has it flowed north.

This is an easy book to read and to like. Yet there are occasional anachronisms, where sketches of people or places forsake the findings of modern linguistic and ethnological scholarship, and repetition of pet phrases or factoids. But the book's big flaw is the fault of the publisher: The quality and clarity of the maps and photographs are inadequate for a study as important as this panoramic biography of a pulsing river.

ý Robert I. Rotberg directs Harvard's Program on Intrastate Conflict and is president of the World Peace Foundation.

from the January 09, 2003 edition - ...

There are a lot of great books on the Nile; Emil Ludwig's classic and Alan Moorehead's come to mind. This is another, updated version, that fills in a lot of the blanks left by the earlier books. It is well written and up-to-date. The emphasis is on politics and history but the author also appreciates the physical wonder that is the Nile. The author spends a lot of time talking about this place and that place, but the book is full of excellent maps to guide the geographically perplexed. It is a good read for the adventurous as well as those interested in the challenges facing modern Africa.

This book is scintillating and titillating. Kevin really brings the audience into his world...a world of confusion, humor, and a large bee-face. Well worth the read.

I am a personal Friend of Kevin Gordon. I have taken tennis lessons with him for five years. I was interested to know that his book had been published. I immediately began reading it the day it came out. I was at the book signing at a nearby Borders the first day also. I went home and began skimming it like I always do. It was great once I began reading. He used such intricate detail to get his point across. I was astonished to read about things that wouldn't even be thought about in the United States. He explained even the smallest things that really got to me. I have begun to apply some of the things that he talked about in his book to my everyday life. I would have never known about sharing a taxi cab if I had never read this book. Can You even picture sharing a taxi cab, or taking cold bucket showers, or even a steady flow of unselfishness? I have learned through this book that there is a truth out there somewhere and we must seek it in order to become better people.It has been wonderful reading this book and I encourage others to see eye to eye with me by reading this book also.

From the BEFORE:this book looks interesting. AFTER: that book had a profound effect on me file, I strongly recommend this book. Kevin Gordon(KG) documents a five-month wild ride through western central and southern Africa. This trip was a physical, spiritual, and psychological marathon that elucidated exteme emtional highs and lows for KG. He is a unique individual in a unique circunstance. He is a black man raised in Canada by Jamacian parents, and educated in prep schools and eventually Harvard; he seems to have no niche. Part of this trip was a search for identity. KG struggles with weighty issues such as slavery, neocolonialism, racism, and poverty in this wonderfully human prose, yet somehow never becomes preachy. In fact, the journal is peppered with a great sense of humor, often in the least expected places. Between pondering which one of his relatives was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time while visiting Cape Coast (slave ship place) he searches for Dallas Cowboy updates, details his gastric indulgences(and frequent extreme hunger) and forms many amazing relationships. The boldest aspect of this books is KG's honesty with himself, and therefor his readers. He painfully acknowldeges his hypocrisies. Everybody has inconsistencies in their ideal beliefs versus their behaviors. Very few of us can admit them to ourselves yet alone publish them. The struggle with his desire for western comforts versus his desire to be a true African and take life in stride continues through the entire journal. The descriptions of the beauties of Africa, both the land itself and the harmony of the various cultures is as memorable as the extreme poverty and suffering he sees in Zaire. This book will open your eyes to the real Africa. KG's passion is to teach. He does a fine job of that through his journal.

Kevin Gordon's first book "Not Yet African" chronicles the author's four-month journey across the heart of Africa, from Senegal to Kenya, in 1993-1994. From the book's cover we learn that Kevin is from Winnipeg and well educated, that his skin is brown, and that he is unsure of his place in the world. We learn that he feels neither African nor American nor Black nor White nor Ivy League, and we wonder as he does 'Who is this man?' Kevin explored Africa as a shy and soft spoken young person looking into the roots of himself and of the continent that he hoped to call home, and 'Not Yet African' is a close transcription of the journal he kept there. His descriptions of Africa are excellent (seven days of waiting for a train that never comes and wondering if he'll get his passport back from the police!), and as a travel story 'Not Yet African' is a good read. But what makes this book special is the clarity and power with which Kevin describes the lifeblood of Africa and his own yearning to be part of it. Kevin lays his soul bare for us in this book, and his courageous writing alone is worth the time it takes to read it. Kevin may be neither African nor American, but in Nigeria and Cameroon and Zaire and Kenya he finds something, a place for his heart, a home for his soul, or at least one of the rivers which has given him life. 'Not Yet African' is a very personal tale about the grief of losing roots and the hope of finding them again, and I learned alot from it. I hope that others will read it and find in Kevin's words a thread common with their own, for this is how healing happens. We're all from someplace, even if we don't have a name for it yet.

Two of my grandchildren read this inspiring story to the third grandchild and me as we made dinner. After the meal, we decided to send money to one of the opportunity companies. Each grandchild contributed $2.50 of their chore money they had earned by raking leaves, moving gravel, cooking, and picking up sticks. Thanks to all those responsible for this book.
Ann Rauscher Hagler

This book is terrific. We can so easily fall into thinking that our world is limited to the things we see everyday, and the book is a great journey through what life is like in so many parts of the world today.

I recommend reading this with your kids, your students (if you have any), and even just for your own personal enjoyment.

Also, the book has sparked a great website as well, which helps to educate young and old on the merits of microloans -- http://www.onehen.org.

This little children's book shows how big the world is. One Hen simplistically shares a personal story of a little boy who buys a hen and how it impacted his life, family, entire village, and country. Beyond just micro-finance, One Hen communicates global poverty, community development, family values, charity and justice issues. helpful to begin educating American children in a "me, me" culture about not just giving to those who are poor and disenfranchised but how to give in such a way that has sustainable, holistic effects on an individual and community.

This book is a great way for families to teach their children about the value of giving and the effect a small kindness or gift may have on many lives. The illustrations are an added plus. It is a good and easy introduction into microfinance and how one person can help make the world a better place

Capstick is definitely my favorite african writer. I enjoyed this book although it is not one of my favorites. However, I ripped through it in several days. Capstick really knew Africa and I certainly have enjoyed reading his experiences!

This is the second Capstick book I have read (the first being "Death in the Long Grass"), and again I was not dissapointed. In this book he takes the role of the safari client--having retired as professional hunter--, and gives us more of an insight on what it is like to be the client on a big game hunting safari in Africa. He vividly describes the sights, sounds, smells, and the very essence of the Dark Continent.

This book is the definitive Capstick work. It is absolutely wonderful, and should be required reading for those who want to go to the Dark Continent and hunt the things that Bite and Trample. Capstick's wit is sparkling, and his hunts are riveting. Papa Bear Hemingway would be proud.

Return to the Long Grass was probably the best book I have read in years.I could not stop reading it! I could feel the hot African heat and the chilly nights.I would recommend this book to anyone who dreams of going to Africa on a safari

Short, humorous stories make this an excellent read for adults and children. It gives insight into African culture from a young American couple.

My son spent 2 years in West Africa as a missionary so I purchased the book for his grandparents.
They enjoyed it so much they want to buy it for some of their friends. It gives insight into the life
of missionaries.

This a wonderful book about the joys and challenges of life as a missionary in West Africa. Having traveled to Togo and Benin, the author's stories were true to my experience and served as a nice reminder of our cultural differences. I especially appreciate the accessability of the book, the fine missionary prayer points and the invitation to engage the reader in God's mission in their life. I have been recommending this book to everyone I meet that may be interested in missionary life and West African culture.
Thank you Suzanne for a book that is sure to bless many people.

Great collections of adventures of a missionary family in Africa. Full of inspiring thoughts and humor and insights into the life of a missionary family.

Peter Dallman, a retired pediatric doctor and docent at Strybing Aboretum in San Francisco, California, spent many years
studying plants and traveling the world to see them where they grow in the Mediterranean climate areas of the world. Prof. Robert Ornduff, the late director of the Univ. of California Botanical Garden, encouraged him to write about these
plants and his travels. The result is a book giving the reader the best armchair picture of the vegetation of a very special part of the world.

This book falls into a category somewhere between botany, climatology, and geography; it looks at several different types of "mediterranean climate" around the world, and describes the different vegetational types within each region, explaining (in a scholarly but accessible way) why these plant communities look the way they do.

It's beautifully produced, with both climate maps and full-color illustrations of plants and plant communities. I know of no other book that explains the relationship between geography and botanical ecology this elegantly; it's a lot of fun to browse, and I would recommend it *very* highly to armchair travellers with botanical inclinations.

This book is great. It has plenty of pictures, diagrams and drawings. Most of the pictures are not in color, however, which is its biggest downfall. It is not a detailed evaluation of mediterranean climates nor is it a good plant ID book, but provides an excellent overview for both the layman and scientist. It provides informatin on the plants that make the mediterranean climate unique and the typical plant communities that are found in them. It is great for someone who doesn't want to get bogged down with individual species and wants to see how all the parts fit together. I first checked this book out of my local library and felt it would be such a good reference book for work, play and travel that I had to have it. The book uses the most scientific and inclusive use of the term Mediterranean which means you are going to get descriptions of plant communities from San Diego to Sacramento to San Francisco. For those of us that prefer the more exclusive definitions it may come as a shock that San Francisco and Sacramento could be considered mediterranean so I'm warning you now. I am currently using this book to help plan a trip to Australia as a supplement to Lonely Planet's travel guides. This book has inspired me to visit all the world's mediterranean climates at some point in my life and I'm not even a plant lover.

Peter Dallman's Plant Life In The World's Mediterranean Climates covers plants of California, Australia, South Africa and the Mediterranean, and will prove more accessible to general audiences studying plants. Here are photos, charts, and a host of details on plant communities and plant life common to this climate, with chapters providing both individual regional details and links between plants of each area. This is a highly recommended pick not just for specialty libraries, but for general collections.

Doris Lessing is at her best showing the habits of the ruling classes in most african countries -- mainly during the times of Martha Quest's marriage, right before the beginning of the war.
This is the second book of The Children of the Violence series and, as the others, is impossible to put down before the end.

This novel, the second in the Children of Violence series, will be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who first met Martha Quest in Doris Lessing's first novel of the series of the same name. This is a story about a young woman about to create her own life with her own family and home, but Martha's self-absorbed indecisiveness make for a character who refuses to do what is expected from her by family and community. Yet Martha is always viewed with compassion and loved by her reader even in her darkest moments.

A central theme of the novel, set during World War II, is Martha's determination not become her mother, or any of the domineering society mother figures of colonial South Africa, but as her own baby is born she sees that circle beginning to repeat itself and rebels with all her strength against the fear of a future filled with domesticity and garden parties. Martha's subsequent actions become the proverbial ripples in a pond as she fails to learn that now that she is adult her actions have long lasting consequences. Yet this is not a typical coming of age story.

By the end of the novel, Martha's stakes out her own path after having become involved with a fledging communist party and its colorful comrades who begin to play an increasingly important role in her life to fill the gap she has created by her rejection of the society in which she was raised and the family she has created.

Any fan of Doris Lessing or any student of history will thoroughly enjoy this novel. One of the richest features of this novel is Lessing's brilliance in the development of her characters whose personalities and idiosyncrasies will echo long after the reader has finished the novel. That said, I thoroughly recommend that the reader read Martha Quest before delving into this novel or other in the series. Only by reading the series in order can one truly understand the evolution of Martha's character and life path.

Doris Lessing remains one of my favorite writers. I first fell in love with her work when I read The Golden Notebook in college, as you do. I'm still slowly working my way through her complete novels.

I really enjoyed Martha Quest, the first book in the Children of Violence. But I was deeply moved by A Proper Marriage. Take the bright young things of a Fitzgerald novel, give them sweat, hangovers and physicality and put them in a troubled country on the eve of a World War. If you can imagine that, then you have a little bit of an idea about A Proper Marriage.

There's something so smart and complicated about the way that Lessing develops Martha in this book. Her disaffection with the excesses of the left lead her into a middle class life, even as her sympathies lie elsewhere. Relationships, war, child-bearing and the colour bar are all woven together into a book that somehow manages to bear the weight of the themes while still givng the reader a very human tale.

Lessing is a simply amazing writer. She works with complex ideas and communicates them without simplifying. Her writing is always lovely and human. A Proper Marriage is one of the best examples of her work. I think that it adds richness if you begin with Martha Quest, but the book can stand on its own right.

Recommended both for fans of Lessing's work and people new to her work.

In Doris Lessing's second "Children of Violence" series *A Proper Marriage*, we discover that Martha, in marrying Douglas, becomes even more torn in her quest to attain full stature as a woman. Martha, in this story, not only has to reconcile her self to the causes she believes in, to her marriage with Douglas Knowell, and to motherhood, but also to the townspeople with whom she becomes entwined. Another delight of this novel for me is the way Lessing has Martha look at both individual and group dynamics throughout the story, providing seductively keen insight. Lessing's writing promises tension, suspense, and wonder for the engaged reader. *A Proper Marriage* sequels *Martha Quest* in which many of the delights in the first of the series continue on to the second, including the beautiful way Lessing mirrors Martha's interior life with the exotic and varied African natural and elemental landscape. I would recommed reading *Martha Quest* first in order to more fully appreciate *A Proper Marriage.*

The story upon which this picture book is based changes depending on the locale--it might be a tiger in Indian tales or a bear, as I have heard it told in a Native American version. In all, the story is a tale of patience and love discovered, and Kurtz paints this theme beautifully in LION'S TAIL.

In this version, set in Ethiopia, the story is told from the point of view of a little girl who feels left out when her father takes a new wife. The girl gets advice from her grandfather, and thus the tale is set in motion. What sets this apart from the traditional tellings is the strong character development, as well as the point of view.

Cooper's expressive illustrations set the mood for the story setting, as well as the images of the characters, beautifully. With Kurtz's well written prose, illustrations are hardly necessary, but wonderful icing on the cake.

I found this book to be very good and highly recommend it to teachers who have children from Ethiopia or any other African country in their classroom. They will find an appreciation for their country or continent in the reading of this story. Many times Americans tend to put down the African continent and dissolve it into stereotypes. Kids from Africa need support that where they come from is appreciated and that they are welcome in the US too.

My son (age 7) brought this book home from library day at school. We read it together and while I think the lesson of the story might have been lost on him, I don't believe it would be lost on children who face the difficulties of negotiating new mom's, dad's, foster parents, etc. I work with children that have emotional problems and the issue of acceptance (giving and getting) in step and foster families can be dealt with powerfully and sensitively with this book.

In this beautiful new version of a traditional Ethiopian folktale, it is young Almaz, the stepchild, who must earn the love she seeks from her stepmother through great patience. Jane Kurtz has created a story that transcends culture while transmitting a strong sense of place. Floyd Cooper's evocative oil paintings complement the text as they convey the strong emotions of the characters and the beauty of the countryside

My wife and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading "Rescue." We have been so blessed and encouraged by all the lessons that Jean and Gene have learned and shared in that book. Jean is a gifted writer. We knew this already, having read her children's book "The Meaning of Christmas" to our daughter countless times. As pastor of the church where two of Jean's sisters are members, I deeply enjoyed "getting to know" Jean and her family more through reading this excellent book. I will be recommending it often to others. I have asked our church librarians to put my "Pastor's Picks" label on it for others to enjoy. Gene and Jean are truly heroes in the kingdom and we value their lives, ministries, and the brief moments of fellowship we have shared together.

Jean Phillips' book RESCUE not only was very interesting but it gave me a new perspective on life. I particularly appreciate the last chapter concerning trials and affictions. It was the most straight forward and easy-to-understand explanation I have come across.

The Phillips' journey of faith in Africa, which lasted over 40 years, is one that can be an encouragement to all. The watchcare of God over them, even in the midst of the Rhodesian Civil War and many other hazards, is a miracle. God honored their faithfulness with His faithfulness to them during their lifetime of service.

This book is, to put it simply, a record of one woman's walk of faith. It is a depiction of God's servants being repeatedly led into the "valley of the shadow of death" and experiencing divine deliverance.For those who consider foreign missions "pie in the sky" preaching to the heathen, this book will immediately disabuse them of such a misconception.As a teenage friend, college suite mate, and bridesmaid to the author, I have intimate knowlege of her early dedication to God and His calling in her life. This book is a lifelong record of her answer to that call.The comment has often been made that some Christians are "so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good". One of the most appealing facets of this book is the revelation of the oh-so-human emotions of the author and her husband, as they faced many hardships and even death while fulfilling the ministry to which God called them. She makes no attempt to hide nor deny these emotions, but reveals them to the reader, and in so doing shows us that by facing our humanity and turning it over to God, He is able use us to glorify His name, regardless of where our place of service may lie.The author presents to the reader not only the nitty-gritty aspects of day-to-day mission work, lived out with her husband over a period of more than 40 years, but also, the simple joy to be derived from seeing lives changed by God's working through His devoted servants.After many years, during which our paths took different directions, it was a blessing to recently renew our friendship and observe, first hand, how the many trials and tribulations the author and her family have endured have matured her faith and her love and acceptance of all God's creatures.