South Africa Books

This is really useful for historiography for South Africa. Split into lectures and themes, it is good starting place for information for an essay. The only problem though, is that it is a bit out of date these days.

Interesting clips from writers who visited South Africa through time (1860 to 1997). Gives a good feel for what it was like then and now. Includes a Mark Twain entry from his diary. Great insight to the area.

What can i say? With such a long title, what can you expect? This book is great(at least i think it's a book). Buy it today!

The ubject of the slave trade has been written about before but this bookcovers the more interesting topic of the Protuguese trade in the 15th-18th century, and particularly its affects on Africans and the relationship between the church and the slaves, as well as 'others'. This book is scholarly and perhaps slightly dry, but not startinly so, in fact it is also readable and interesting, refreshing and original.

Surely this book adds scholarship to the period, espcially illuminating the relationship between slaves, brazilian society and the church in both Brazil and Portugal. Of particular interest is the work regarding the inqusitions attempts to snuff out tribal religons that remained among slaves brought to the new world.

Seth J. Frantzman

To not be accepted by one's own family - because you are of a darker complexion than they are - a truly terrifying thought for most Americans, but for South Africans, it's a sad truth. "Remittance Man" follows Bertie King, shunned by his family, as he tries to deal with life under a national government which makes American racism look like nothing. It's a story, that although fiction, is sadly remnant of many South Africans' true stories. "Remittance Man" is deftly written and highly recommended to literary fiction shelves everywhere.

For such a serious and possibly-dry subject, this is an interesting book, and it's full of fascinating information. It opened my eyes to how differently these seven countries (and probably every country) handle reproductive rights and practices, based on their unique social evolutions. One of the surprising things is how backward the United States is in most of these areas. The most progressive is Denmark where 80-some percent of all teens use birth control the first time they have sex! What an improved society we would have if we could get to that place. Easy to read!

This book covers South Africa's return to international cricket after 21 years of isolation. Colin Bryden follows the team through it's ground-breaking tour of India, their jubilation and exasperation in the World Cup, and their harsh learning experience in the Caribbean. It is well written, and will captivate the reader to share in the agony and ecstacy shared by those cricketers during this time

In this thorough and readable study, Daniel C. Littlefield examines the African heritage of rice cultivation in colonial South Carolina. Littlefield discusses the choices rice planters made in securing workers from certain African regions; he also discusses the knowledge these Africans brought to the plantation economy. Littlefield argues that expertise in rice cultivation mostly came to South Carolina from Africa. Rice was grown by the Malagasy, the people of Madagascar, and by many peoples of Upper Guinea (a region encompassing the modern nations of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia). South Carolina planters, in fact, paid the highest prices for workers from Senegambia (the environs of the Senegal and Gambia rivers), a major center of rice cultivation in Africa. Littlefield argues that, throughout the era of the slave trade, South Carolina merchants and planters showed an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of African regions and ethnic groups. He also asserts that not only African labor, but African expertise helped generate the wealth of the opulent Carolina Lowcountry. This work should prove interesting to those interested in African-American history, Southern history, and colonial American demography. Particularly intriguing is Littlefield's research based on the newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves in South Carolina. That portion of the work includes a list of different African ethnic groups present in South Carolina.

I often peruse the sport fishing and hydrographic table offerings of large, so-called "brick and mortar" stores, in search of rare environmental biology books centered on our merry friends, the crustaceans, but more often than not (I won't lie, I've never found ONE) I come away empty-handed. Thanks to the broadcast net (no pun intended) of Amazon, I have found this ode to the metabiological analysis of the dreaded and oft-maligned rock lobster of 1978-81. For it was in these years that the general populace was being bombarded with messages that aquatic fauna are to be feared: witness such pabulum as "Jaws," "Jaws 2," and "Pirrhana."[sic] Now, the specie'Jasus Lalandii, as I discovered by thumbing the briney pages of this tome, is more a danger to sea urchins and plankton than it is to the average beach-goer and pleasure boater. This is one tough lobster, and the book makes me want to almost be a rock lobster. My interest in rock lobsters is sometimes jested at by the simple-minded, who can't believe it to be more than a twisted fascination with some pop ditty by the B42's, but I assure you, one read of this book and you'll have a new appreciation for our salty friend, as well. Highly recommended.

As anyone who has ever read of Rorke's Drift or seen The Great Movie, the events of January 1879 in Natal bear regular retelling, and for the purists no detail is without significance. This short summary of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift is expertly handled and contains some details of the battles and their brave participants which are to be treasured.

No writer of fiction could evoke more drama, tragedy, heroism or humanity than that surrounding the fearless Zulu Impis and the 24th Regiment of Foot. Readers will find that Michael Glover has put it all in a nutshell.