South Africa Books

No one can really convery what Apartheid South Africa was truly like but this book is about as close as you can come to telling the story through images. I urge you to see for yourself.

This book consists of many short stories for the first half, and the other half is dedicated for Leo (the lion that they've raised at their park ranger's house).

Lots of fun and amazing stories of the wild visitors and temporarily adapted wild orphans while the author and her family lived in the park rangers houses in 10 years in south Africa.

The later half is about Leo - the cute and sweet lion. Some parts are heart aching but he'll eventually settle down fine in the comfortable environment.

The authors love of nature, love for her children, and great love and respect to the wild animals are beautifully written with lots of nice photograph inside.

One of my favorite books! I've read this book on the way to my safari trip in Africa.

I found this book to have wonderful recipes. I have tried out almost half of them.

"Choice," a leading book review digest, listed "Women and Revolution in Africa, Asia, and the New World" as an Outstanding Academic Book in Political Science for the years 1992-1997. It contains much needed information about women's participation in sixteen revolutionary upheavals -- three in Africa, four in Asia, three in the Middle East, four in Latin America, as well as Afganistan and Yugoslavia. Each chapter covers the status of women before the revolution, their contributions during the revolution, and their postrevolutionary status. "Revolutions" vary from outright war to liberation movements, they rise from different beliefs, and participants set different goals, but one outcome remains the same: in each case, the interests of women are subordinated, a strong commitment to a women's agenda does not emerge. The double message -- that women participate in major ways in reform movements, even violent ones, and that women do not profit correspondingly -- needs to be clear to all those who believe that equal rights have long since been won. Sixteen examples from around the world present a strong message.

I gave this book 5 stars because I really dig this chick's name!

Through painstaking research and numerous interviews, author Hannah Britton brings to light the important influences that have shaped the feminist movement in South Africa - a movement that in turn, plays an important role in this evolving democracy.

The women in South Africa have worked both individually and collectively to attain national office in large numbers, and have used the legislative process to improve the quality of life for themselves and their children. I was surprised to learn just how successful this movement has been. (By 1999, South African women held slightly less than one-third of all nationally elected positions).

Britton is quick to note that electoral success is not always sustainable and does not necessarily translate into long-term gender equality. Indeed, while their accomplishments have been significant, so are the challenges that face the next generation of parliamentarians.

As an expert in her field, Britton's writing style is clear and concise - which makes for an interesting book for the academic and non-academic alike. Britton not only brings to the forefront an often-overlooked frontier in the history of South African democratization but gives this history a human voice by including incredible personal anecdotes from these remarkable feminist pioneers.

Collaboratively compiled and edited by M. J. Daymond, Dorothy Driver, Sheila Meintjes, Leloba Molema, Chiedza Musengezi, Margie Orford, and Nobantu Rasbotsa, Women Writing Africa: The Sou-thern Region is an extensive, 554-page work detailing (from a distinctly women's perspective) the history, culture, social issues, and modern-day living conditions in the southern region of Africa. Countless personal testimonies form the core of this aptly presented and profoundly insightful collection. Women Writing Africa is enthusiastically recommended for African Studies and Women's Studies reference collections and reading lists.

Peter Goldblatt's The Woody Iridaceae is the first thorough botanical investigation of this specialized group of genera. Though comprising just 13 species, one of which is newly described here, the group displays a surprising diversity of vegetative and floral form, the latter an adaptation to pollination by a variety of organisms, including insects and birds. To assess the evolutionary history and relationships of the species to each other and to other Iridaceae, the author has applied the rigorous methodology of cladistic analysis to a large array of data gathered from field, laboratory, and herbarium investigations.

In addition to detailed descriptions of the morphological, chemical, and cytological features of plants, this monograph provides information on the history of knowledge, including cultivation, of these southern African plants; distribution maps; the etymology of the names; complete synonymy; and notes on relationships and features that warrant further investigation.

Each species is illustrated with a full-page watercolor, drawn from a living plant, by noted botanical artist Fay Anderson.
Original line drawings by Margo Branch show other details of the plants. A glossary of special terminology and an index complete the work.

It is beautifully illustrated with watercolors of each of the species, as well as line drawings detailing morphological attributes....valuable, readable and beautiful book, and worthy of acquisition by those interested in unique plant forms.

This book is the best that I have read on the origins of apartheid in South Africa. It is a carefully-written and quite lucid explanation of the politics and unionism of black and white workers during World War II. Alexander illustrates how the degree and kinds of racial unity among South African workers during this period have been drasticaly underestimated by historians, but his analysis of the complex phenomena of working-class racism is full and nuanced. He has done an amazing amount of research into the political economy of the South African state at a number of different levels, and smoothly integrated this with a subtle and interesting social history of workers. This book serves as an excellent example of this kind of analysis for US historians of labor.

Nat Nakasa wrote once: 'I may shut up for some time because of fear. Yet even this will not make me feel ashamed. For I know that as long as the ideas remain unchanged within me, there will always be the posibility that, one day, I shall burst out and say everything that I wish to say - in a loud and thunderous voice.'

In The World of Nat Nakasa that loud and thunderous voice speaks with the clarity and insight that have caused this book to be read and reread for almost a decade.

Writing that is at once deft, humorous and compassionate speaks with concern and great understanding of the bleak and shut-in times of the early sixties.

In this new and expanded edition editor Essop Patel includes work by Nakasa which has come to light since the first edition was published.
--- from book's back cover