Showing titles in Africa

According to the ancient sources, Hannibal was nine years old when his father led him to the temple at Carthage and dipped the young boy's hands in the blood of the sacrificial victim. Before those gods, Hannibal swore an oath of eternal hatred toward Rome. Few images in history have managed to...

We learn who we are as we walk together in the way of Jesus. So I want to invite you on a pilgrimage. Rwanda is often held up as a model of evangelization in Africa. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Thursday of Easter week, Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they...

At a time when the world waits anxiously to see what will happen next in Zimbabwe - when there is little food in the country's shops, life expectancy is plunging and Zimbabweans are fleeing repression and unemployment - this book gets to grips with the man at the helm of a corrupt regime; the man behind the monster. Holland's tireless investigation begins with her having dinner with Mugabe the freedom fighter and ends in a searching interview with Zimbabwe's president in December 2007, more than 30 years later.

Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history. 

First published in 1907, The Defense of Duffer's Drift is a classic essay on small unit tactics based on author Ernest Dunlop Swinton's experiences in the Boer War in South Africa.

In a chilling exploration of a nearly forgotten chapter of history, Marcus Rediker delves into the dark depths of slave ships in the 18th century. In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the...

The charming real-life fairy tale of an American secretary who discovers she has been chosen king of an impoverished fishing village on the west coast of Africa. King Peggy has the sweetness and quirkiness of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and the hopeful sense of possibility of Half...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Bloomberg Forbes The Spectator Recipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie Award A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end global poverty "The poor you will always have with you," to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey...

With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has...

With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has...

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the White man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war.

This audiobook provides an introduction to one of the most intriguing wars of modern times - a war that saw several innovations, including the use of heliography and indirect fire, and caused the complete overhaul of the great Imperial British fighting machine in its aftermath. It also tells of the first example of the brilliant use of guerrilla warfare by the people who, to this day, have never been outclassed: the Boer commandos.

It is a story of adventure, of travel, and of intrigue. It is also a tale of wedding and betrayal, of jealousy and political maneuvering. For not only are the lives of the four main players in this drama of interest, so are the lives of the many people surrounding them. There are even pirates and great engineering feats. Small wonder that this story has spawned so many fictionalized stories, branching off the main thread of a dying republic becoming an empire.

I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me. The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living...

My Race is the memoir of a gifted Jewish athlete growing up under the apartheid system of South Africa. As both an outsider excluded from the conservative Christian mainstream and an insider who reaped many of the benefits of a society founded on white supremacy, South African track star Lorraine Lotzof Abramson had a unique vantage point on the apartheid experience.

During the peak of the Somali piracy crisis, three ships - from Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan - were hijacked and then abandoned to their fate by their employers, who lacked the money to pay ransoms. All would still be there, were it not for Colonel John Steed, a retired British military attaché, who launched his own private mission to free them. Author Colin Freeman, who has himself spent time held hostage by Somali pirates, takes listeners on an inside track into the world of hostage negotiation and one man’s heroic rescue mission.

Egypt wasn’t just ancient, it was timeless. From its earliest days along the Black Nile to the rise of pyramid-building god-kings, from foreign invasions to golden mask tombs and global obsession, this book tells the full, sweeping story of the civilization that refused to die. Clear, sharp, and wildly listenable, EGYPT walks you through dynasties, myths, battles, and breakdowns without the textbook sludge. You’ll meet pharaohs, heretics, conquerors, and commoners.

Out of a sidelined, colonial-era expedition in Africa comes a new history of cruelty, deception, and adventure from the acclaimed author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia. In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa’s resources. The key to cracking open the...

A “gripping and important” (The Guardian) account of nine tumultuous days, as the assassination of Nelson Mandela’s protégé by a white supremacist threatens to derail South Africa’s democratic transition and plunge the nation into civil war. Johannesburg, Easter weekend, 1993. Nelson...

Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction This “elegant” and “unfailingly empathetic” narrative (The New York Times) follows three ordinary South Africans living through the most extraordinary reckoning with race and power any modern country has ever faced. Dipuo, who...