South Africa Books

A compilation of essays by Ms. Gordimer not to be overlooked by those of us "burnt out" on societal issues...or even personal issues. A heartfull of optimism and honesty that I found refreshing. I read this while walking my daily treadmills at the gym after my daily treadmills at my job. Often feeling weary of life's struggles, I choose to look at others's woes for distraction (usually the newspaper). Reading her thoughts and essays I couldn't help but be inspired not only by her optimism and honesty and her unflagging belief and value in people, but also her analytic mind. She's obviously not afraid to think deeply about peoples and is not afraid to "get personal". I read the book late last year and will probably pick it up again or another of hers. I quit my 19 years of successful employment in the private sector and am now considering non-profit work, thanks to Ms. Gordimer and others like her.

i could not have gotten around in cape town without this map. Thank God I had it. It made my movement in Cape Town enjoyable and easy. Easily slipped into your bag or back pocket (sticking out of course)- all landmarks are clearly marked. public transportation stations clearly marked. easy to follow. don't go without this map.

Just like the rest of the Lonely Planet tour guide books - it's awesome! Everything is the same in this book as the others, except it's about South Africa. So, if you liked their other tour guide books, as I do very much, you'll like this one too. Check it out!

A credible and fascinating account of Great Britain moving into the 20th century. Miller excels in portraying a critical cusp in British military history. Are the technological paradigm shifts, and calming prosperity of Great Britain in the late 19th Century, so much different than the new world milieu facing the US moving into the 21st? The immediacy of the past is why I love history. Although young at the time of publication, clarity of writing indicates touches of genius; one can easily see a "David" emaniting from this intelligent writer.

As I stood recently at John MacBride's final resting place in Dublin's tiny, quiet Arbor Hill Cemetery, I reflected on this book about this Irish hero who led Irish and Irish-American volunteers against the British in the South African War. Tragically, he emerged from the Boer War safely, but was executed for his role in the 1916 Easter Uprising and his body dumped in a mass grave with several of his patriotic comrades. His sacrifices certainly helped lay the foundation for Ireland's freedom.

This book focuses mainly on MacBride's service in the Boer War, the politics and passions of the Irish involvement, and his relationship with the flamboyant Maud Gonne, who bore his two children. MacBride is not a perfect hero, which makes him (and this book)all the more engaging.

Dr. McCracken's book is well-wrought history, finely detailed and comprehensively researched. It is also a darn good story, well told. He's a devoted scholar and historian, and a fine writer. I would recommend this work highly to any student of Irish republicanism and/or the Boer War.

Aimed at advanced undergraduates, this excellent textbook uses interlocking graphs to build up rival neoclassical and neo-Keynesian models of the macroeconomy. The models start out simple but soon incorporate real-world complications; by following their development, the reader comes to see how the different models are based on different economic assumptions (e.g., whether labor markets clear) and have different policy implications (e.g., regarding fiscal deficits). Much of the analysis is tied to policy debates in South Africa, and the last two chapters give an overview of South African monetary and fiscal policy in the 1990s. The writing is clear, the math is simple, the assertions are modest, and the analysis is refreshingly non-ideological -- which, in the case of economics, means that the authors don't think that neoclassical analysis necessarily has a monopoly on truth. A great book!

An extremely rainy summer in Pretoria gave ground to more reading then had been expectet beforehand, and my usual stock of books were not in my posession. This turned out to be a stroke of luck, as it were, because rather than turning to my own, I had to turn to the bookshelves of my landlady. Mafeking road and other storys caugth my eyes; an hour later it had also caught my heart. Bosman spinns storys out of the everyday life in the Groot Maroco district as easely as he use the history of the Transvaal republic as the setting for his tales. His storys are funny, sad, warm and exiting, often all at once. His talent as a storyteller is indesputeble, and his love for the ways and traditions of the people of the Marico is impossible to hide. Not for nothing is his storys said to be the best to ever come out of South Africa. This book has my warmest recomodation. If you read it , you will never regret. If you don't, it is your loss.

Now, there's no empirical way to prove the above statement, but given the dominance of social-science conventions in writing on African history, "Magomero" is an obvious front-runner. Landeg White is a gifted literary stylist, and this book often reads like a novel (when someone says that, make sure they're not thinking of "Finnegan's Wake"). It is a study of a village in southern Malawi (colonial Nyasaland) over 100+ years, but it is much more than that too.

White's sense of drama is aided by some highly dramatic personages who figure prominently in his story. The most famous is missionary-explorer David Livingstone, a perennially fascinating, complex and influential shaper of the continent's destiny. He visited Magomero, site of the ill-fated Universities' Mission to Central Africa, frequently on two expeditions in the 1850s and 1860s. White perceptively examines the ambiguities of Livingstone's antislavery crusade, not least the paradox of purchasing slaves in order to free them---thus inadvertently stimulating the market. But John Chilembwe is just as interesting: a Malawian Protestant minister and protonationalist who studied in the USA, founded an independent mission, and eventually died leading a doomed rebellion against British rule in 1915. The later chapters are not as event-oriented, but the lucid accounts of cash cropping and womens' work are probably more representative of daily life in the colonial era, and a major contribution to social and economic history.

"Magomero" does not have detailed source notes (they tend to scare off the mass audience White aims for here), but references to scholars' names without the titles of their works ensure that only specialists can swiftly identify White's sources. The other problem is that the author's own account of villagers' accepting his presence and explanation of his research is awkwardly unconvincing; it would be more credible in the words of Malawians themselves, without assuming that they care about associations with long-dead muzungus (Europeans). These minor faults aside, this is the most enjoyable scholarly book I've come across in nearly 20 years in African Studies. For more on the area's history, see E. Mandala, "Work and Control in a Peasant Economy" and M. Vaughan, "The Story of an African Famine." G. Shepperson & T. Price, "Independent African," a classic on Africa, tells the Chilembwe story with great depth and sensitivity. For an authentic Nyasaland account based on oral data from participants in the Rising, see G.S. Mwase, "Strike a Blow and Die."

Making Use of History begins with a general survey of abuses of historical discourse in political oppression around the world. The introduction then proceeds to exemplify how various authors of fiction have taken it upon themselves to un-write and re-write collective histories to counter authoritarian narratives and restore a voice to the marginalised and silenced segments of society.
A case study of the experiences in South Africa succeeds the introduction and probes deeper into the problems of using of history as political ammunition and literature as historical counterdiscourse. The historical time under review spans from the late 1980s to 1994 and the subsequent literary contention with this period and its historiography is examined in three literary works: Mongane Serote's Gods of Our Time, Mike Nicol's The Ibis Tapestry, and Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying. The theoretical framework through which these novels are analysed is provided by Michael Green's compelling theories on the interaction of the discourses of literature and history as propounded in his book Novel Histories.
The basic thesis of Making Use of History is that meta-conflicts - the distortion of truths and epistemologies that have evolved and been consolidated by historiographies of confrontation - continue, to a great extent, to determine a population's perception of reality long after the immediate conflict has ended.
For this reason a re-examination of the historiography of the past is of great importance, firstly in order to make an opening for reconciliation and forgiveness and, secondly, in order to break way for a future founded on a basis of inclusive values.
The literary engagement with the past, as concluded in the analyses of the three South African novels, seeks to rupture the continuity of a strongly dichotomised epistemology and through that dissolve the inherited polarisation of society. Falsification of history is exposed as constructed discourse and past simplifications of reality as sharply demarcated into homogenous self-justifying, categorisations of, Us against Them, are challenged with paradox, doubt and introspection. Likewise, the literary charge challenges conventional historical science by problematising its claim to truth, the assumption of objectivity and empirical documentation.
The body of South African literature and literary criticism is interesting in the study of counter-histories not just due to its intensity and actuality; it also offers new perspectives on the efforts of decentralising and democratising the political use of history. Accordingly, the selection of literature and literary criticism in this book presents a search for a new form of historiography that disallows the privileged position enjoyed by centres of power in defining collective histories. This is attempted by changing the rules and games of historical discourse from being instruments that are easily appropriated to legitimise the politics of the present to mechanisms that will always position history against present politics. Rather than endorsing the present, history gets to relativise the ideologies, truths and identity formations of the present.
Making Use of History views the literary engagement with the past from several angles that concern the process of understanding and re-composing the past. The need of remembrance, forgetting, guilt and forgiveness enter as important elements in the creation of a collective history. In this way, the book touches on several issues concerning a great number of torn societies - Chile, Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia, ex-Yugoslavia - that share the experience with South Africa of going through a transition from a past of animosity to a present of integration.

Outstanding reference for Sub-Saharan mammals. Definately not just a field guide, this work gives scholarly statistics and field observations. One finds pictures, tracks, and much else. A must-have for any serious student of southern African mammals. Well worth the price.