Africa Books

A truly compelling and rivetting tale of the early exploration of Africa. By "early" I mean the previously little documented period of 1788-1830, prior to which virtually nothing was known of Africa's interior probably because almost all earlier travellers perished from thirst, starvation, disease, and hostile natives - most dangerous of all were the dreaded "Moors", whose self-proclaimed desert hospitality was invariably suspended whenever helpless and starving white explorers sought their compassion.

Virtually all the explorers sponsored by the African Association died on their journeys but decadent 21st century man must surely marvel at the incredible degree of honour and sense of duty possessed by these intrepid late 18th/early 19th century gentleman explorers.

In 1899 in London a group of geographers, scholars, and traders decided it was time to solve Africa's mysteries: they formed the African Association, the world's first geographical society, and several over decades sent adventurers to explore the 'dark continent'. These early adventurers were to change the image and shape of Africa, and Anthony Sattin describes their journeys of adventure in The Gates Of Africa, lending a lively and engrossing atmosphere of adventure and discovery to the account. Sattin is a journalist and broadcaster who himself has traveled extensively over the region in which the early African Association operated: his personal familiarity with the area lends Gates Of Africa an additional air of authority.

For those interested in the genus Conophytum this book has to be an absolute must. Although the book is a full blown reference book Hammer's writing style is easy and there is no reason why anyone interested could not read it from cover to cover, rather than just use it a reference tool.

The photographs are superb and the plants almost leap off the page at you. The book is well produced and print and paper quality are excellent. Essential for a book that will be used on a regular basis.

It cannot be faulted and should be in the library of every enthusiast of these beautiful plants.

This botanical work is, quite simply, a classic. The author is the world's authority on his subject, genus Conophytum. Steve Hammer is a natural-born writer and his prose is clear and concise, while also being delightfully witty and informal. For me the most attractive aspect of the book isthe many, many color photographs by John Trager. They make anyone want to grow conophytums! Some plants are photographed to show their rainbow of colors; they are delicious looking.

Yet beyond the wit and color, this is a botanical monograph and will be for many years to come the standard reference on the genus. The book is laid out logically, with chapters devoted to each series within the two sections/subgenera. The early chapters talk about the group's taxonomic history, its cultivation and so forth.

All in all, I not only recommend this book; I urge you to peruse it!

This book is gorgeously illustrated with lots of graphics taken from authentic textiles and pottery. The legends are written in an easy to read narrative style and take readers from ancient myths through to modern theories on the history of this region. Highly recommended

I used this book as the text to give 28 6th Graders an introduction to the wealth of Africa's past--and they hung on every word. The mix of storytelling, political, economic, cultural and religious history served as the basis for several lively student presentations. In short, my only complaint about this book is the fact that its out-of-print status prevents me from ordering copies by the dozen for next year's class.

Publishers--Please get on the ball. With the addition of these African Kingdoms to the Virginia State Standards of Learning, you have an eager market and a product that beats anything else now on the market for this age group.

I read this book years ago and it has always stuck in my mind. I am glad to have found it again.

The story is fiction because it revolves around some Americans who supposedly found themselves in von Lettow's army. But the historical setting and many of the characters and events are real.

When WWI broke out, the small number of German troops in German East Africa (now Tanzania) rallied and trained the local tribes and the resident German farmers into a guerilla force to resist the much larger British army to the north in Kenya. The book details some of the tactics used, as well some remarkable inventiveness.

Paul von Lettow, the commander, had an ensemble of talent in his army's baggage train that proved very handy. There was a German fellow named Ersatz who invented a lot of things out of local ingredients. (Because the Royal Navy pretty much owned the seas, there was no resupply for the German soldiers in Africa.) Everyone knows what "ersatz" means now - but this campaign is where the concept got its name!

Like a medieval army, this one had no formal logistical support. It relied on many camp followers, including women and children, to keep the army fed and supplied. Many of these womens' efforts and what life was like for them in the field are described.

One incredible tale told of an Imperial Navy vessel marooned in the Rufiji Delta. Some of the German farmers had domesticated African elephants, and used then to haul guns off the ship up the slopes of Kilmanjaro to shoot at the British army. It sounds highly implausible, but Stevenson gives evidence for many of the points in his story at the end of the book.

This is one of those books where you learn a lot while reading a great story. Stevenson claims that von Lettow knew that the Germans couldn't hold East Africa, and that he felt he was just laying the groundwork for an African country free from future British rule. Whether this is true or historical revisionism I don't know, but the Tanzanian people did build a statue honoring von Lettow in Arusha several years later.

"Ghosts of Africa" is a great title, as it refers to an incredible story that not many people know - at least in the USA. It is the reverse of "the African Queen" - and far more interesting!

This novel really captures a lost part of Africa. It details the German resistance in Africa during WWI. The germans were led by german noble named Paul Von Lettow. For four years they tied down nearly half a million british troops with barely 12,000 of there own. Von Lettow wrote the book on guerilla warfare although he is largely forgotten today. The book contains a great cast of characters in addtion to Von Lettow, many of whom were based on real people. The book has plenty of action and romance. I highly recommend it.

Give a Goat is a picturebook based on a true-life story of philanthropy sure to appeal to young readers of all ages. Mrs. Roswell's fifth-grade class learns how the gift of a goat helped Beatrice, the young daughter of a family in Uganda. "The goat gave lots of milk - more than enough for the whole family to drink. Beatrice was in charge of selling the extra milk. With all that milk, Beatrice's family got healthier, and they earned enough money to pay for school. Beatrice finally got her wish!" Hearing the story inspires the children to undertake a similar charity - they want to give a goat too! Together they learn about teamwork as they engage in a special charity fundraising math project; by selling healthy snacks, they raise enough money to buy a goat, a flock of chickens, and some ducks to help three families. The delightfully minimalist color illustrations add the perfect touch to this wonderful story with a positive message about the value of philanthropy and helping others.

More than any other I know, this book is one our kids need to let sift into their hearts, minds and souls.

If enough kids read it, and are encouraged by their elders to value and respect it, the message in this book could change the world.

Actually, the book has a dual message: (1), Although it feels stupendous to give to those in need, (2), it's also vital to set things up so that your recipients can "pass on the gift," i.e., are able and likely to give a similar gift to someone else (who then gives to someone else, etc., etc.).

As the book's narrator puts it, recipients would be "able to help another family, and then another family, and then another family, in a long chain...."

This is the main message of Heifer International, the award-winning international development organization known and loved by many around the world. Give a Goat author Jan West Schrock is the daughter of the founder of Heifer International - Dan West.

Basically, Give a Goat is the true story of Mrs. Rowell's fifth-grade class in Maine. In order to raise money to buy and give a goat to a family in need, Mrs. Rowell's class decides to sell "healthy snacks" in the teachers lounge.

The book is easy to read but doesn't talk down to kids ("Mrs. Rowell taught us about quality control, inventory, investment, and profit margin..."). It also speaks the language kids speak today ("One gift leads to another and another and another.... Cool!").

The pictures are fun, funny, expressive and the work of an immensely talented artist, Aileen Darragh. Darragh has an unusual knack for drawing children and getting their essence down on paper, visually. Although her children don't look anything like his, they nevertheless remind me of Norman Rockwell's. Whatever it is that makes children differ from adults, both Darragh and Rockwell were and are able to capture and drop down onto paper.

For example, one of my favorite pictures shows the class at the beginning of the book, when they are "restless because of all the rain." This restlessness was what made Mrs. Rowell pull a book off her shelves, Beatrice's Goat, to read to the class and calm them down. And this was the beginning of things. This was the book that gave everyone the idea of working to send their own goat to Africa.

In this picture a young man is draped across his classroom desk like a rag. His feet stick up to the ceiling from his desk chair so that his shoe soles are parallel to the classroom ceiling. His face is hidden in his arm, which stretches straight as a ruler across the top of his desk, and his fingers clutch tightly at the far edge of the desk top. This gives him, I'm sure, the exquisite feeling of stretched muscles, which, being a fifth-grade boy who needs far more physical exercise than fifth-grade boys typically get in the modern American classroom, must feel like nirvana to him.

Another picture shows a fifth-grader writing in a ledger book, his face almost touching the paper, his mouth a thin line of concentration, his fingers curled tightly around the pencil -- the posture of one totally excited, thrilled, engaged and determined to get the $120.00 it will take to send a goat to an African family in need.

Another shows a toddler reaching with every fiber in his tiny body, toward the healthy snacks sitting on top of the school-basketball-game sales table. He teeters on tip toe, his little trousers twice as big as he is, his trunk bending sideways in one last-ditch effort to reach his coveted culinary goal.

And when you least expect it, there's suddenly a small goat in the bottom right-hand corner of the page, eating one of the classroom pencils.

Later, there's an amateur goat-pilot flying an ancient prop-plane to Africa, with one chicken bailing out in a parachute (Mrs. Rowell's class raises enough money for not only a goat, but some chickens and ducks as well).

In my humble opinion, this book does what we all need to do more of: train those who'll be leading our world in the not-too-distant future, to have the `right' attitude toward humanity as a whole.

Jeri Studebaker, author of Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future

In these essays, J.M. Coetzee analyzes thoroughly and attacks the role and the (mis)use of censorship in arts.

Taking Offense
State censorship is an inherently bad thing. The cure is worse than the disease.
`A censor pronouncing a ban, whether on an obscene spectacle or a derisive imitation, is like a man trying to stop his pen.s from standing.'

Lady Chatterley's Lover
LCL is a tale about the transgression of boundaries - sexual and sexualized social boundaries.
D.H. Lawrence wanted `the end of taboos, the end of dirty language, the end of dirty books.'

The Harm of Pornography (Catharine MacKinnon)
MacKinnon treats pornography as a political issue, not as a moral one. She sees pornography as an instrument of male power, not pleasure. For her, male desire is one of the avenues through which male dominance realizes itself.
She shows a `striking absence of insight into the desire as experienced by man.'
Her analysis is also parochial, based only on specific US situations.

Censorship and Polemic: Solzhenitsyn
The heroic battle of one man against an enormous censor bureaucracy (more than 70,000 men).

Osip Mandelstam and the Stalin Ode
Stalin and his apparatus castrated a generation of writers, robbing it from its political power and its power of historical witness.

Zbigniew Herbert and the censor
In the face of the paranoia of state censorship, Z. Herbert opted for the `silence' solution.
He chose to work with allegories, thereby defending the autonomy of art (the power of art to validate itself) and proving that poetry can give a vision of an ideal world.

South-African censorship
For the censor, the call for the end of censorship in the name of free speech is part of a plot to destroy the existing order. The censor has the right to take what steps are necessary to protect society.
André Brink's device is Ars Longa: In the end, it is always the artist who wins, because one way or another truth will come out.
For Breyten Breytenbach, `censorship is an act of shame. It has to do with manipulation, power, and repression. For the writer to consent to being censored equals self-castration.

Erasmus: Madness and Rivalry
Erasmus disguised himself into a fool in order to be able to criticize the Catholic Church (The Praise of Folly). Coetzee's portrait shows us Erasmus as an independent and impartial individual, but therefore insulted from all sides: `I would rather die than join a faction'.
Coetzee's analysis is based on postmodernist theories. He shows us Lacan as a vitalist, an adept of Bergson's `acte gratuit' (`it is not at all necessary that the poet knows what he is doing; in fact, it is preferable that he doesn't know.') and Foucault as a romantic (`madness as a voice to contest reason').

J.M. Coetzee's book unmasks the real goal of censorship and the methods authors (try to) used to circumvent it. It is the work of a superb free mind.
A must read for all lovers of art, and specifically literature.

I'll resist writing a large review for this book, because the reader should be allowed to make up their own mind. I bought this book after reading many of Coetzee's novels, and 'Stranger Shores'. 'Giving Offense', in my opinion, is a much stronger collection of work than 'Stranger Shores', which is also exceptional, simply because the essays relate to each other far better than those included in 'Stranger Shores'. One can read 'Giving Offense' essay after essay and stay within the same frame of mind. His essays about 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', Osip Mendelstam and Solzhenitsyn are my personal favourites. A very impressive book.

The information contained within this text is thought-stimulating, thereby encouraging the reader to further research the specific area of his or her personal interest regarding the African Diaspora by providing a helpful selected bibliography, footnotes and endontes pertinent to each essay, as well as as an useful overall index.

Another excellent read for us Africans by a African who knows his history and not brain washed by His Storyof the intruder.

Excellent book handy size and all of the must see sights are clearly marked

The Globetrotter Zambia travel book is, in my opinion, the best book for a first time traveler to Zambia. It gives lots of insight on where to go and what to do from A to Z. It's easy to carry and enjoyable to ready. I am very glad I carried with me. Way to go Globetrotters.

albert nolan is a brilliant writer and thinker. his book, Jesus before Christianity is incredibly compelling. He delves deep into the truth of Jesus and his teachings. the extrapolation of the gospel to the horrors of apartheid is intensely insightful and heart-felt. the joy and hope in Albert's messages is highly infectious. i am reading his current book and will write a review of it soon. if you want to be blown away by gospel truth don't be afraid to hit these books with goal-line stance attitude. ye shall be changed....

this is a very special book that anyone with a conscience will love. south africa hopefully is on its way out of the darkness. this book was written 20 years ago. get it today.

This a very powerful and wonderful story. Heather is an Angel sent to care and love the orphans. She stood-up against all odds and survived the worst with her faith in God. God Bless Her and All The People she comes in contact with. Thank You Heather for sharing your story.

God's Golden Acre

I'm a prolific, but exceedingly choosy reader. I'm not one to jump all around every book I read, shaking my tamborine!

This book, however, proved its value with the first few words. It is a very rare book that slows my automatically quick reading down, in order to absorb every word. I thought I would breeze through this interesting book in an afternoon. Not so. Evening came, and I was deeply engrossed. The book was way beyond interesting. Mesmerising would be a better word.

I was on a journey through Heather's life. I was on a quest to find out what she found, in the dim African huts where sometimes children were dying. Sometimes alone. I was hungering to find out how she was going to be able to help - just one person against unimaginable odds.

All through, the story is told on a very upbeat note. Heather tells how she has learned to help a dying child in the best way possible. She tells how she manages to go on, with sick children and AIDS all around her. She tells it is a way that makes me want to leave my comfortable world, hop a plane, and swing in beside her, to help those children. She presents as a very real human being, like many of us. However, she follows God's call to spend her life helping helpless children, unlike most of us.

She has success stories too. Beautiful little faces surround her, full of health. Many color photos illustrate her book. Heather and her one-in-a-million husband love what they are doing. I am certain that God loves what they are doing. Any reader will be stunned, challenged, delighted, and unwilling to leave the book until it is finished.

I love this book! I'm going to buy copies, and send them to my best friends. You should take a long evening, and swim into this book. You will not come out the same.