African history Books
University of Chicago Press A Fistful of Shells
Book Synopsis
£21.00
The University of Chicago Press Bulletproof
Book SynopsisExamines literary and historical texts to show how writers have manipulated images and ideas associated with the cattle killing - harvest, sacrifice, rebirth, devastation - to speak to their contemporary predicaments.Trade Review"Taking the Xhosa cattle killing as her focus, Wenzel offers something beautifully paradoxical: a new, anticanonical canon of South African writing. Concerned with historical and literary 'failures,' this work is a profound reflection on the fragmentary and spectral (but not therefore any less compelling) nature of echoes, influences, and prophecies. A work of sophistication and intellectual ambition, Bulletproof is a timely and innovative intervention in postcolonial studies." - Rita Barnard, University of Pennsylvania"
£999.99
The University of Chicago Press Unmasking the State
Book SynopsisWhen the Republic of Guinea gained independence in 1958, one of the first policies of the new state was a village-to-village eradication of masks and other ritual objects it deemed 'fetishes'. This book intends to understand why this program was so important to the state and examines the complex role it had in creating a unified national identity.Trade Review"Unmasking the State is an engaging and insightful work that constitutes an important contribution to African studies, political and religious anthropology, and the study of iconoclasm. Mike McGovern artfully weaves an edifying tapestry of the demystification programs launched by Sekou Toure in the 1960s among Loma-speaking people of Guinea, West Africa. This is a well-argued and timely book." (David Berliner, University of Brussels)"
£999.99
University of Illinois Press Street Life under a Roof
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A well written and often gripping ethnographical study of the young, marginalized, and poor youth who live there, and who are separated from distant homes that are either unable or unwilling to provide for them. . . . The book's findings and discussions around gender dynamics make a worthy contribution to anthropological analysis of youth and understandings of the logics of social organization that develop in tough urban environments."--African Studies Quarterly "Margaretten's ethnographic realism and dialogical writing style make for compelling reading, while her appreciation of Zulu idioms and metaphors adds depth and thickness to her ethnographic accounts."--Journal of the Anthropological Institute "An important contribution to the anthropology of youth in Africa. Margaretten's rich, experience-near, ethnographic descriptions support a complex analysis of the lives of South African street youth in a context of dramatic inequality. It is nearly impossible to read Street Life under a Roof without feeling a connection with the youth of Point Place, and taking a deep interest in their struggles with love, family, and money."--Daniel Mains, author of Hope Is Cut: Youth, Unemployment, and the Future in Urban Ethiopia"An exemplary ethnography of post-apartheid life. Margaretten takes us to a place that few people know even exists: a self-run shelter for homeless young people in Durban. What emerges is a searing portrait of drugs, violence, and AIDS but also of compassion, love, loyalty, and humanity."--Mark Hunter, author of Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa"A major addition to the literature on youth in Africa as well as 'homelessness' and street children more generally."--Adam Ashforth, author of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa
£999.99
Yale University Press African States since Independence Order
Book SynopsisTrade Review"An impressive achievement--a bold, highly original, and coherent account of the political and economic failures of post-independence sub-Saharan Africa and its prospects for a better future, which will appeal to a wide variety of audiences with differing levels of knowledge."—Nelson Kasfir, Dartmouth College"This is the first book to provide a rich integration of the history of Africa since independence with the relevant social science theory and evidence. It will decisively shape the way we think about the continent from now on."—James Robinson, University of Chicago"African States Since Independence is the kind of book that my students have been requesting for years. It provides an excellent introduction to African politics while at the same time covering new ideas and debates in sufficient depth that even the most expert among us can learn a lot. It is a wonderful resource for students and lovers of Africa—both those who are just discovering the continent and those who have worked on it for 20 years."—Séverine Autesserre, author of Peaceland and The Trouble with the Congo
£49.15
Presidio Press The Battle Of Mogadishu Firsthand Accounts from
Book Synopsis“No matter how skilled the writer of nonfiction, you are always getting the story secondhand. Here’s a chance to go right to the source. . . . These men were there.”-MARK BOWDEN (from the Foreword)It started as a mission to capture a Somali warlord. It turned into a disastrous urban firefight and death-defying rescue operation that shocked the world and rattled a great nation. Now the 1993 battle for Mogadishu, Somalia-the incident that was the basis of the book and film Black Hawk Down-is remembered by the men who fought and survived it. Six of the best in our military recall their brutal experiences and brave contributions in these never-before-published, firstperson accounts.“Operation Gothic Serpent,” by Matt Eversmann: As a “chalk” leader, Eversmann was part of the first group of Rangers to “fast rope” from the Black Hawk helicopters. It was his chalk that suffered the first casualty of the ba
£999.99
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc Lose Your Mother A Journey Along the Atlantic
Book SynopsisIn Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, she reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African American history.The slave, Hartman observes, is a strangertorn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider. There are no known survivors of Hartman''s lineage, no relatives in Ghana whom she came hoping to find. She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way and with figures from the past whose lives were shattered and transformed by the slave trade. Written in prose that is fresh, insightful, and deeply affecting, Lose
£15.30
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pirate Enlightenment or the Real Libertalia
Book SynopsisThe final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything.Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societiesvibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.In graduate school, David Graeber conducted ethnographic field research in Madagascar for his doctoral thesis on the island's politics and history of slavery and magic. During this time, he encountered the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group of mixed descendants of the many pirates who settled on the island at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, Graeber's final posthumous book, is the outgrowth of this early research and the culmination of ideas that he developed in his classic, best
£21.60
WW Norton & Co Calibans Shore The Wreck of the Grosvenor and the
Book Synopsis"This incredible true story reads like the wildest fiction."—Booklist
£11.99
WW Norton & Co Africa Is Not a Country Notes on a Bright
Book SynopsisA Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022 An exuberant, opinionated, stereotype-busting portrait of contemporary Africa in all its splendid diversity, by one of its leading new writers.Trade Review"[An] acerbic debut…Faloyin is bent on examining and demolishing [stereotypes about Africa], a task he carries out with verve." -- Michela Wrong - New York Times"Faloyin [is] a smart, often scathingly funny writer…While much of the history of Western involvement in Africa is sordid and depressing, Africa Is Not a Country is not. It brims with the sort of outrage that speaks of hope, of change." -- Bookpage (starred review)"With clarity and incisive wit, journalist Faloyin explores the origins of the 54 countries of Africa…Africa Is Not a Country [is] a forceful rebuttal of erased histories and simplified imagery as well as a celebration of a continent already living its dynamic future." -- Booklist (starred review)"A spirited critique of Western misrepresentations of Africa…[E]xuberant and informative." -- Publishers Weekly"Trenchant…A well-researched, cleareyed deconstruction of highly flawed conventional wisdom about Africa." -- Kirkus Reviews"A necessary book that deserves its place in the canon as essential reading for anyone seeking an introduction to this vast continent—as well as the rest of us, who need to be regularly challenged on what we think we know about Africa and the damage done by that." -- Sally Hayden - Irish Times"Warm, funny, biting and essential reading." -- Adam Rutherford, author of How to Argue With a Racist"A brilliant, prescient exploration of a richly complex continent. An antidote for our times." -- Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibranch"This book is hilarious, ferocious, generous, and convincing. It made me reconsider almost everything I thought I knew about Africa, which is somewhere we often hear about, but far too rarely hear from." -- Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland"An impeccably researched work, brimming with humor and intellect. A necessary read for 2022." -- J K Chukwu, author of The Unfortunates"A triumph of a book. A charismatic and hugely enjoyable read packed full of essential information—revealing a huge, vastly diverse set of stories, situations, and histories that really do pop the balloon of lazy stereotyping of Africa. You’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t read this book." -- Nels Abbey, coauthor of Think Like a White Man"This book should be on the curriculum." -- Nikki May, author of Wahala
£22.79
LUP - University of Michigan Press Black Cultural Life in South Africa
Book SynopsisUnder apartheid, black South Africans engaged with an array of textual and visual cultures in ways that shaped their responses to this period of ethical crisis. Marshalling forms of historical evidence, this book considers the importance of popular genres and audiences in the relationship between ethical consciousness and aesthetic engagement.
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press African Print Cultures
Book SynopsisFeatures the work of new and well-established scholars on the diversity and heterogeneity of African newspapers published from 1880 to the present. The contributors highlight the actual practices of newspaper production at different regional sites and historical junctures, while also developing a set of methodologies and theories of wider relevance to social historians and literary scholars.
£999.99
The University of Michigan Press Black Cultural Life in South Africa
Book SynopsisUnder apartheid, black South Africans engaged with an array of textual and visual cultures in ways that shaped their responses to this period of ethical crisis. Marshalling forms of historical evidence, this book considers the importance of popular genres and audiences in the relationship between ethical consciousness and aesthetic engagement.
£999.99
Alfred A. Knopf Winnie and Nelson
Book Synopsis
£28.00
Random House USA Inc Africa
Book Synopsis
£19.55
Penguin Putnam Inc Into the Hands of the Soldiers
Book Synopsis
£15.30
Schiffer Publishing Ltd African Art in American Collections Survey 1989
Book Synopsis
£65.69
Schiffer Publishing Ltd Graffiti South Africa
Book Synopsis
£36.89
Johns Hopkins University Press Captives and Countrymen
Book SynopsisThis first systematic study of how the United States responded to Barbary Captivityshows how public reaction to international events shaped America domestically and its evolving place in the world during the early nineteenth century.Trade ReviewPeskin's splendid book gives the reader a new way to look at the Barbary piracy. -- John A. C. Greppin Times Literary Supplement 2009 Peskin's work should be welcomed as providing an important piece to the larger unfolding story of Western interaction with the Arab world. -- Paul Baepler New England Quarterly 2009 After September 11 2001, many books have explored the clash between the United States and the Barbary States in the years bridging the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, seeking the traces of early national engagement in the Muslim world... [Peskin] finally moves beyond these publications, bringing both new sources and new ideas into play... The debate over the Barbary Wars was pivotal in American contemporary politics and public opinion. -- Marco Sioli Journal of American Studies 2010 Captives and Countrymen is an important contribution to our understanding of the public sphere, nationalism, and imperiialism in the early republic. -- Andrew M. Schocket Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 2009 Peskin provides an important contribution to the understanding of the development of American nationalism. -- Paul A. Gilje American Historical Review 2010 A well-researched, closely argued book from which both general readers and specialists alike will benefit. -- Franklin T. Lambert Diplomatic History 2011Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionPart 1: Captivity and the Public Sphere1. Captivity and Communications2. The Captives Write Home3. Publicity and SecrecyPart 2: The Impact of Captivity at Home4. Slavery at Home and Abroad5. Captive Nation: Algiers and Independence6. The Navy and the Call to ArmsPart 3: Captivity and the American Empire7. Masculinity and Servility in Tripoli8. Between Colony and Empire9. Beyond Captivity: The Wars of 1812Conclusion: Captivity and GlobalizationAppendix: Lists of Letters from CaptivesNotesIndex
£51.50
University Press of Kentucky A Simple Freedom The Strong Mind of Robben Island
Book Synopsis
£20.25
University of Minnesota Press Bikos Ghost
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Highly recommended for academic libraries with collections supporting a wide range of programs."—ARLIS/NA Reviews"Highly recommended."—CHOICE"A substantive and impressive book focused on an important strand of South African political, social and visual culture, and its debt to Black Consciousness."—Canadian Journal of History"Hill’s work successfully exemplifies an art history that broadens definitions, uncovers seemingly marginal material, and demonstrates the importance of pursing the process of history-making itself. Most importantly perhaps, Biko’s Ghost demonstrates the need for art histories that bring together complex, competing, and sometimes discordant narratives."—CAA Reviews"An admirable work of study and cross-referencing."—Mail & GuardianTable of ContentsContentsAbbreviations Introduction: Let’s Talk about Consciousness 1. Shaping Modern Black Culture in the 1970s 2. Of Icons and Inquests: “Steve Biko, God Be with You, BPC”3. Contemplating Death: Artists and Abjection4. Creating a Culture of Resistance5. Silencing the Censors: Black Consciousness between the Lines in the 1980s6. Transitions and Truths in a New Democracy7. Museum, Monument, Marking: Black Consciousness in the New MillenniumEpilogue: “After Such a Long Time His Life Is Still Dug Out”Acknowledgments: I Write What I MustNotesBibliographyIndex
£999.99
Hoover Institution Press,U.S. Jihad in the Arabian Sea Hoover Institution Press
Book SynopsisThe lands and coasts across the Bab el Mandeb-the tiny strait that separates the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean-at the southern tip of the Red Sea, have for centuries had a forbidding reputation as lands of piracy and privation. In Jihad in the Arabian Sea, Camille Pecastaing examines the twenty-first-century challenges facing this troubled and treacherous region. He looks at the past and present of the key players in the area, including Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, the Sudan, and Ethiopia, reviewing the terrorist activities of Al Qaeda, the state of lawlessness that has led to the rise of piracy in the western Indian Ocean, the rise of the radical Shabab group, and the spread of extremist forms of Islam in the south. Pecastaing displays a real feel for the land, seamlessly blending history and current headlines to paint a picture of a region that, for most of the past two thousand years, has never quite evolved into the era of the modern state. He shows how the current challengesTable of Contents Chapter 1: The Gates of Tears Chapter 2: In the Land of the Mad Mullah: Somalia Chapter 3: In the Land of the Imam: Yemen Chapter 4: In the Land of the Mahdi: Sudan Chapter 5: War at Sea Chapter 6: The Rise of the Shabab Chapter 7: Al Qaeda Redux Chapter 8: The Sad Lands
£17.95
Hoover Institution Press,U.S. Hope for South Africa Hoover Institution
Book SynopsisConsiders the recent reforms initiated by President F.W. de Klerk and the willingness of Pretoria to negotiate with the African Congress and leaders such as Nelson Mandela. The authors examine the country's power structure, economy, politics and the ways in which these various branches of government and the private sector interact.
£7.83
MJ - Ohio University Press Individual Freedoms and State Security in the African Context
Book SynopsisIn 1980 the ZANU/PF government of Robert Mugabe came to power after an extended war of liberation. They inherited a cluster of emergency laws similar to those available to the authorities in South Africa. It was also the beginning of the cynical South African state policy of destabilization of the frontline states.Trade Review“Interesting and informative piece of work, soundly researched, well-documented, and representing a mature and scrupulously fair assessment of how Zimbabwean law has functioned during the first years of independence when the state has been faced with serious threats to its security … [the author has done] his research in a country with access to court records, which is interesting in itself and a comment on freedom in Zimbabwe.”
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Individual Freedoms and State Security in the African Context
Book SynopsisIn 1980 the ZANU/PF government of Robert Mugabe came to power after an extended war of liberation. They inherited a cluster of emergency laws similar to those available to the authorities in South Africa. It was also the beginning of the cynical South African state policy of destabilization of the frontline states.Trade Review“Interesting and informative piece of work, soundly researched, well-documented, and representing a mature and scrupulously fair assessment of how Zimbabwean law has functioned during the first years of independence when the state has been faced with serious threats to its security … [the author has done] his research in a country with access to court records, which is interesting in itself and a comment on freedom in Zimbabwe.”
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Education in the Development of Tanzania 19191990
Book SynopsisDeals with the realities of education in a debt-ridden African country trying to cope with the pressures of externally imposed educational budgets.Trade Review“Buchert's sensitivity to the importance of language is…[a] strength as this has been largely ignored in many discussions of education in Tanzania…Education in the Development of Tanzania is an important contribution to the debate on educational transformation from a historical perspective. It also provides an insightful historical analysis of education in Tanzania.” * The International Journal of African Historical Studies *“[This book] is lucid and contains very valuable data on education and development in Tanzania. Being a product of a doctoral thesis, it is quite detailed by way of information and discusses a good number of educational innovations that have not yet been widely researched and published for wider readership. For policy makers, researchers and students of education, this book is a rare source of knowledge.” * Journal of Third World Studies *“The book is meticulously detailed, well-documented, and carefully analyzed. The maps, graphs, and statistical information included in the study help to clarify the wide-ranging data…The book should serve all internationally minded educators as an excellent source book.” * Journal of Developing Areas *“This is an interesting and scholarly examination of education in Tanzania during this century. It is particularly welcome because Tanzania, perhaps more than any other African country, has experience of such a diversity of educational policies; there is much to be learned from the Tanzanian experience.” * International Journal of Educational Development *“A timely study of the realities of education in a debt-ridden African country.” * Choice *
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Picturing Bushmen
Book SynopsisThe Denver African Expedition of 1925 sought “the cradle of Humanity.” The explorers returned claiming to have found the “Missing Link” in the Heikum bushmen of the Kalahari—and they proceeded to market this image.Trade Review“The pleasure of reading Gordon’s wit and erudition never compromises the chilling account of western culpability for the manufacture of a vision of culture that has harmed those trapped in its gaze.”
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press East African Expressions of Christianity East African Studies Eastern African Studies
Book SynopsisChristianity has been spread in Africa by Africans. It is the story of peoples seizing control of their own spiritual destinies—rather than the commonplace notion that the continent’s Christian churches represent colonial and capitalist powers that helped subdue Africans to European domination.Trade Review“An important contribution to the field. Its emphasis on the examination of Christianity as a religious phenomenon is an important one, and one increasingly recognized as of central significance for an understanding of Africa’s history and society.”
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World
Book SynopsisThe fact that many of the leaders in the Third World were educated by Christian missionaries is a decisive factor in world politics today.
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Civil Disorder is the Disease of Ibadan Western African Studies Chieftaincy Civic Culture in a Yoruba City
Book SynopsisCivil Disorder Is the Disease of the Ibadan is a study of chieftaincy and political culture in Ibadan, the most populous city in Britain’s largest West African colony, Nigeria.Trade Review“This is a brilliant and original reinterpretation of Ibadan’s political past, addressing for the first time the question of how the city’s civic culture was constituted and how it changed between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.…Watson shows apparently effortless mastery of highly complex data.…A really beautifully crafted and lucidly written book.” * Centre for West African Studies, University of Birmingham *“There is far too much texture in Watson’s work to do justice to it in this brief review. She skillfully weaves together the social and political contexts of Ibadan’s history to highlight just how complex the city’s reality was. Also, her deft use of documentary, linguistic, and oral sources reflects a keen grasp of relevant methodologies.”
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Crisis Decline in Bunyoro Population Environment in Western Uganda 18601955 Eastern African Studies Paperback
Book SynopsisOne of the first studies of the political ecology of a major African kingdom, Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro focuses on the interplay between levels of environmental activity within a highly stratified society.Trade Review”This work is a welcome and salutory history of colonial loss and decline that incorporates colonial politics and policy, but goes beyond to focus on demographics, disease, and environment. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”“Although some might contend that Bunyoro’s experience was atypical for colonial Uganda, it is nevertheless valuable for historians to have access to studies like this as it important to understand the experience of all regions of colonial East Africa.” * The Historian *“Arguably the most important study of a much-neglected society in more than thirty years.”
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Cultivating Success in Uganda Kigezi Farmers and Colonial Policies Eastern African Studies Paperback
Book SynopsisKigezi, a district in southwestern Uganda, is exceptional in many ways. In contrast to many other parts of the colonial world, this district did not adopt cash crops. Soil conservation practices were successfully adopted, and the region maintained a remarkably developed and individualized land market from the early colonial period.GraceTrade Review“Carswell argues that Kigezi District is an exception to patterns of agrarian change elsewhere in colonial Africa. Its farmers rejected cash cropping, adopted soil conservation practices, and kept producing surpluses despite a rapidly increasing population.... Carswell shows that the area’s farmers rejected colonial land policies for very pragmatic reasons, but that they adopted some practices that built upon precolonial land use patterns.... (A) synthetic and meticulous study of colonial and postcolonial agrarian change.” * International Journal of African Historical Studies *
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Marikana Voices from South Africas Mining Massacre
Book SynopsisThe Marikana Massacre of August 16, 2012, was the single most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the end of apartheid. Those killed were mineworkers in support of a pay raise.Trade Review“Part investigative report, part oral history, part polemical pamphlet, Marikana illustrates what can be achieved when academics work closely with activists.” * Los Angeles Review of Books *“Written by both academics and political activists, the book captured my interest from the first page…The raw data provided by the book makes it not only recommendable for labor scholars and African studies, but also a thrilling read for social movement activists. Marikana leaves room for more inquiries, which should contribute to conceptual debates.” * African Studies Quarterly *“Reading this accessibly written title is essential to anyone wishing to understand what happened in the South African platinum belt in the winter of 2012…. A monumental work, of which the first and not least merit is to have demonstrated with journalistic timeliness how much the sociological gaze—an embedded sociology here—may even shortly after the event bring so much to our understanding of it.” * Politique africaine *“Last year, in South Africa, miners were preyed upon and hunted like dogs for merely questioning the bad treatment that they received…. I read and wept. Why didn’t I know about this? Why didn’t you know more about this?” * Examiner.com *“A moment in South African history that…may come to be seen as having been as significant as ‘Sharpeville’ and ‘Soweto.’… Well written, extremely scrupulous in its research and forceful in its argument.”“No amount of capitalist brutality will deter our cause for a living wage. Workers should read this book about the struggles at Marikana.” * Joseph Mathunjwa, president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, South Africa *“The book is an attempt to provide a bottom-up account of the Marikana story, to correct an imbalance in many official and media accounts that privilege the viewpoints of governments and business, at the expense of workers.” * Jane Duncan, Highway Chair of the Media and Information Society, Rhodes University, South Africa *
£999.99
Ohio University Press The Gender of Piety
Book SynopsisThe Gender of Piety is an intimate history of the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe, or BICC, as related through six individual life histories that extend from the early colonial years through the first decade after independence.Trade Review“Urban-Mead uses African church-goers’ biographies from the early and mid-twentieth century to illuminate, from the inside, the environment of Zimbabwean nationalism in Matabeleland, its birthplace. A wonderful recovery of the lives of a forgotten and betrayed cohort of people.”“Urban-Mead should be commended for writing a book that challenges scholars to reconsider how they study and theorize about practices of faith in a social world.” * The Mennonite Quarterly Review *“Through close examination, Wendy Urban-Mead illuminates the gendered connections of individual women and men to the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe. The detailed biographies to reveal a pattern: proper female behavior intersected with church teachings, while men encountered difficulties in combining Ndebele masculine expectations with church ideology. The Gender of Piety is a major contribution to studies of family, church, and gender history in Africa.”
£999.99
Ohio University Press Feeding Globalization
Book SynopsisBetween 1600 and 1800, the promise of fresh food attracted more than seven hundred English, French, and Dutch vessels to Madagascar. Throughout this period, European ships spent months at sea in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but until now scholars have not fully examined how crews were fed during these long voyages.Trade Review“Jane Hooper’s groundbreaking study of Madagascar’s provisioning trade offers a fascinating new perspective on Indian Ocean exchanges, European long-distance trade, Madagascan engagement with global markets, and the transformation of the island in the early modern era.”“This important book highlights Madagascar’s key role in the Indian Ocean’s maritime and commercial circuits as a provider of foodstuffs and provisions.”“Jane Hooper sheds light on a crucial yet unexplored aspect of early modern globalization.”"Feeding Globalization is an engaging introduction to the complexities of Indian Ocean trade and an important reminder of the importance of food and fresh water to global development.“ * American Historical Review *“This is a welcome addition to the Anglophone historical scholarship on Madagascar, most of which focuses on the nineteenth century. Hooper meticulously reconstructs a convincing picture of how the steady demands of European shipping and colonies for food supplies stimulated the emergence of state formation in western and eastern Madagascar.”“Hooper has done a fine job by pushing the history of Madagascar’s economic ties with the exterior into territory not adequately explored (or explored at all) by other historians.”
£26.09
Ohio University Press Buying Time Debt and Mobility in the Western
Book SynopsisThomas F. McDow synthesizes Indian Ocean, Middle Eastern, and East African studies to explain how in the nineteenth century, credit, mobility, and kinship knit together a vast interconnected Indian Ocean region. McDow’s new historical analysis of the Indian Ocean reveals roles of previously invisible people.Trade Review“Deeply researched and impressive in scope. It highlights the importance of multi-site research—McDow conducted extensive archival research on three continents and makes particularly strong use of sources from Zanzibar, India, and the United Kingdom. The book is clearly written and compelling. It is suitable to be assigned in whole or in part to undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of the Indian Ocean and East Africa and should be in the library of every scholar of the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean.” * International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 53 No. 2 (2020) *“In Buying Time, McDow argues for a transnational western Indian Ocean network of credit and debt that linked both coastal and interior Oman to Zanzibar and the continental African interior in the long nineteenth century. With remarkable, previously ignored Arabic legal documents at its heart, McDow’s analysis is notably innovative in the way it links environmental factors, debt, and mobility.”“If scholars have long known in a general way that Oman and East Africa were connected, McDow traces out many of the specific and unexpected ways in which they were, in the stories and actions of specific persons. This is new territory.”“This is a brilliant, readable study…[McDow] demonstrates effectively that seas connect traders and peoples rather than divide them.…Summing up: Highly recommended.” * CHOICE *McDow’s stimulating elaboration of the Omanis’ alternative understanding of space as composed of reliable obligations to and from others, at whatever geographical distance, reveals a western Indian Ocean world in motion, greatly enabled by its regular seasonally alternating monsoon winds…. McDow delivers provocatively on his initial promise of depicting ‘a historical process rooted in Islamic finance and adapted to a burgeoning global commodity trade’. * Journal of World History *“McDow has given us a compelling and beautifully crafted account of the people who moved across the nineteenth-century western Indian Ocean and the factors that both enabled and constricted their mobility. He has captured the cadence of their lives and reveals to what extent time and financial transactions shaped their agency across the ocean, as abolitionists and imperialists competed with and against them.” * Transnational, Cross-Regional, and Global Connections *
£56.10
Ohio University Press Yankees in the Indian Ocean
Book SynopsisThis unprecedented study of nineteenth-century American merchant and whaling activity in the Indian Ocean shows how it shaped later US imperial incursions in the Pacific and Caribbean. Sailors’ journals and other primary sources reveal American influence on the period’s global commerce, illegal slaving, and environmental degradation.Trade Review“Historian Jane Hooper concludes this engaging monograph by calling the American presence in the western Indian Ocean ‘a complicated, disorganized mess.’ Focusing on New England merchants and whalers in the southwest Indian Ocean region, the book is, nevertheless, a welcome addition to scholarship on American expansion and Indian Ocean history. Ship logbooks and journals are notoriously difficult to employ for historians unless one is looking for sailing directions and weather conditions, but by diligently teasing out meaningful snippets of information about the practical matters of American merchants and whalers, sea travel, provisioning, and slaving, and locating them in their wider nineteenth-century American cultural and expansionist context, Jane Hooper succeeds admirably.” -- Edward A. Alpers, author of The Indian Ocean in World History“Long acknowledged but only cursorily explored, the presence of American merchants in the western Indian Ocean has finally been given its due in this fine examination of their brief but consequential maritime engagement with the islands and coasts of East Africa and Madagascar. Through an insightful use of ship logbooks and journals (among other sources), Hooper illuminates the range of ‘Yankee’ activity to make clear that ports and islands in the southwestern Indian Ocean attracted significant American investment as New England merchants sought profits in new areas between the late eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth that ranged from whaling to illegal slave trading.” -- Pedro Machado, coeditor of Pearls, People, and Power: Pearling and Indian Ocean WorldsA clearly written and compelling read that would make a solid addition to graduate syllabi in maritime history and the histories of American empire. It is concise, accessible, and vibrant enough for undergraduate readers as well. -- Mallory Huard * H-Nationalism/H-Net *
£62.90
Beaufort Books The Embassy
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn a country at war, embassies are sort of a ship in a storm - stable and self-contained but yawing wildly in the turmoil around them. More than that, though, they are the forward point of America, a place where our country engages the rest of the world. America starts at its embassies, and the inner working of them are fascinating, largely unknown and incalculably important. The Embassyis a truly harrowing and important account of an American embassy in what [was] arguably the most chaotic and violent country in the world. It is, I think, a book that every reading American should have. -- Sebastian Junger, Bestselling author of "The Perfect Storm"Dante Paradiso has performed a singular public service in bringing this tale of modern American diplomacy to life. This story of Liberia amid human tragedy and regime change is the real thing. The narrative is gripping. The reader gets an unvarnished portrait of a traumatized society and the extraordinary efforts of a handful of American public servants in Monrovia and Washington to bring desperately needed change. Here are heroes just doing their job. -- Chester A. Crocker, James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown UniversityThe Embassy: A Story of War and Diplomacyby Dante Paradiso tells the inside story of how Blaney and his team kept the embassy open, risked their lives to cross the front lines to meet with General Cobra, and played a crucial role in negotiating a complicated sequence that included Taylor being forced into exile, the rebels allowing ECOWAS peacekeepers to reopen the port, and getting peace negotiators back to the table. Paradiso, a foreign service officer who served in that embassy, skillfully tells the story through the eyes of several unsung heroes: the ambassador, a defense attache, a diplomatic security officer, a local Liberian staffer, and a humble and unnamed "Political Officer" that can only be the author. Although the book is nonfiction, it keeps pace like a thriller and includes just enough context to keep the reader well-informed without bogging down the story. The dialogue between the officials is authentic and at times jarringly human.The Embassyis a riveting quick read and a dramatic firsthand account of a fascinating and frightening series of events. As a policy analyst and former diplomat, several aspects ofThe Embassy'stale especially caught my attention. First, is the unheralded courage of the embassy staff. The ambassador and his colleagues faced immense personal danger to represent their country and to save innocent lives. This is a must-read for anyone who thinks diplomacy is about fancy cocktail parties. -- Todd Moss, former American diplomat in West Africa and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development -- Center for Global DevelopmentBravo to Paradiso for bringing us this incredible story. There may just be a message in here, for the possibilities of foreign policy by consensus and not by tweet, for our better angels driving smart policy, as opposed to the dark forces with which we're all too familiar. In short, not only is The Embassy a gripping story you won't be able to put down once you start, it provides thought-provoking lessons on what we can do better as a country, and a reminder that we can and must be a force for good in the world.We're going to need to remember these lessons going forward. -- Bob Cesca, Huffington PostParadiso's book tells a story about people who took on the seemingly impossible task of keeping all hell from breaking loose. He has a novelist's sense of pacing and character, assembling the story from the perspectives of the various people involved-from those who witnessed the events from the embassy offices to others in the streets of the capital. Paradiso's prose captures the surreal landscape of his subject, although he takes pains not to exoticize or romanticize the various groups involved: The world press, which otherwise ignored the country, was quick to run images of child fighters dressed in lurid wigs and wedding dresses, wearing necklaces of human fingers. Overall, this book offers an engaging story that will be unfamiliar to many American readers as well as a nuanced look at the grittiness and complexity of war and diplomacy. A compelling account of an obscure international crisis. -- KirkusThe book then is a blow by blow, conversation by conversation, policy thought by policy thought of what transpired inside the embassy during this period. It gives an inside look at how diplomats saw the crisis and what they did in response. Indeed, they were collectively a heroic bunch.They put their lives on the line more than once, no more so than when the ambassador led a foray across the battle lines into rebel held territory to meet with rebel leaders. Certainly it was this activism and later follow-ups that compelled the rebels to withdraw and to turn over their positions to the regional peacekeeping force. The book is written in the present tense, so the reader remains engaged as the saga unfolds. The author employs lots of quotations, citations that were obviously drawn from memory and recorded during interviews with folks many years afterwards. This, of course, permited selective recall of what one would have hoped to say.Additionally, the book is interesting because the author did not rely upon any official documents so there are no references to embassy reporting that would have unequivocally buttressed the narrative.However, despite the fact that this is an unconventional history, it is an accurate one. The events described did happen and did unroll along the lines discussed.Praise is due to the ambassador and his team for their insight, perseverance and competence in damping down a war and helping Liberia achieve peace and progress. -- Robert Gribbin, Africa Reflections
£21.56
University of Missouri Press Dangerous Spirit of Liberty
Book Synopsis
£46.50
Michigan State University Press With Faith in the Works of Words
Book SynopsisThe first book to look behind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and examine reconciliation's larger and fundamental role in the transition from apartheid to nonracial democracy. In doing so, it finds that there have been many beginnings of reconciliation in South Africa.
£999.99
MJ - Ohio University Press Human Rights in African Prisons
Book SynopsisPrisons are always a key focus of those interested in human rights and the rule of law. Human Rights in African Prisons looks at the challenges African governments face in dealing with these issues.WrittenTrade Review“(T)his is a lucid, well-informed and compelling overview of the critical issues in African correctional institutions.…essential reading for African scholars, legal experts, human rights workers, and even informed, socially-conscious general readers, and thus is a must for any academic library.” * African Studies Quarterly *
£999.99
Aris & Phillips Ltd Hieratic Ostraca in the Hunterian Museum Glasgow
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£38.80
Griffith Institute Fecundity Figures Egyptian Personification and
Book Synopsis
£66.78
Griffith Institute Papyrus Harkness MMA 3197 Volume 0 Griffith
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£139.37
J.R. Collis Publications The Southern Ghors and Northeast Arabah
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Changing Lives Press From Barefoot to Bishop
Book SynopsisFrom Barefoot to Bishop is a compelling story of faith, from being saved to being of service. This memoir will inspire church leaders and laity alike, and it will appeal to those with a passion to living a life with a mission.
£21.56
Hay House Inc A Blessing in Disguise
Book SynopsisThis long-awaited book from New York Times best-selling author Immaculée Ilibagiza teaches readers how to pray the rosary of the seven sorrows for greater wisdom, strength, and forgiveness.In this new book by New York Times best-selling author Immaculée Ilibagiza, readers will rediscover this important message from Mary. Mary wanted the whole world to know the seven sorrows rosary, and Immaculée not only shares it but explains Mary’s specific teachings for how to pray it, as well as offers the promises attached to the prayers.The Rosary of the Seven Sorrows dates back to the Middle Ages, but it gained new popularity following the sightings of the Blessed Virgin Mary that occurred in the 1980s in Kibeho, Rwanda. During these sightings, which were validated by the Vatican, Mary asked that this special rosary be introduced to the world. It was spread widely to thousands of people, who then taught it to thousands of oth
£17.45
National Geographic Society The Good Kings
Book SynopsisWritten in the tradition of historians like Mary Beard and Stacy Schiff who find modern lessons in ancient history, this provocative narrative explores the lives of five remarkable pharaohs who ruled Egypt with absolute power, shining a new light on the country's 3,000-year empire and its meaning today. In a new era when democracies around the world are threatened or crumbling, best-selling author Kara Cooney turns to five ancient Egyptian pharaohs--Khufu, Senwosret III, Akenhaten, Ramses II, and Taharqa--to understand why many so often give up power to the few, and what it can mean for our future. As the first centralized political power on earth, the pharaohs and their process of divine kingship can tell us a lot about the world's politics, past and present. Every animal-headed god, every monumental temple, every pyramid, every tomb, offers extraordinary insight into a culture that combined deeply held religious beliefs with uniquely huma
£20.89
