Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Africa

Africa supplies the majority of the world's diamonds, yet consumers generally know little about the origins and history of these precious stones beyond sensationalized media accounts of so-called blood diamonds.

The Lord's Resistance Army appeared on the conflict landscape of Central Africa at the dawn of perhaps one of the bleakest period of post-independence African history: the 1980s and 1990s. This was the era of Afro-pessimism, during which the proliferation of war and crisis in Africa appeared simply overwhelming.

The indigenous Africans known as pygmies have interested outsiders for thousands of years. In the 2200s BC, the Egyptian pharaoh Pepi II referred to one as a "dancing dwarf of the god from the land of spirits", and the Ancient Greeks were also familiar with them. Today, of course, anthropologists know a lot more about the pygmies, a collective of indigenous groups in Africa who are still defined by the fact that they have an average height of less than five feet tall.

The Zulu are one of the most famous ethnic groups in Africa and possibly one of the most misunderstood. Of course that was due almost entirely to the fact that European colonial powers encountered the powerful group in the 19th century and found that they were more than willing to resist and fight them. At the height of its power in the southern part of Africa, the Zulu could rely on an army of 40,000 warriors, presenting a formidable obstacle to the designs of the British.

In the case of some historical figures, a single event or small span of years is sufficient for understanding the timeliness and extent of their impact upon the world. But others have taken lengthier, more convoluted journeys with broadly-evolved circumstances, intentions and roles to be played, reinventing themselves and playing different roles as times change.

On the morning of April 15, 2004, the world woke up to the extraordinary news of the kidnap in a little known hamlet of Nigeria of some 276, primarily Christian schoolgirls, by the radical militant Nigerian insurgent group Boko Haram.

País ubicado en el extremo meridional de África, esta nación es conocida por su extraordinaria diversidad de culturas, idiomas y creencias religiosas, con incluso once idiomas reconocidos como oficiales por la Constitución de Sudáfrica. Todos los detalles de este gran país, en un audiolibro de gran valor que usted no debe desestimar.

Este pequeño país del oeste africano se caracteriza por la confluencia de elementos opuestos: su territorio no llega al millón de kilómetros cuadrados, pero alberga una de las naciones más pobladas del continente.

Kaum ein anderer Politiker dieses Jahrhunderts symbolisierte in solchem Maße die Friedenshoffnungen der Menschheit und den Gedanken der Aussöhnung aller Völker auf Erden wie der ehemalige südafrikanische Präsident und Friedensnobelpreisträger Nelson Mandela, dessen Rolle für seinen Kontinent mit der Gandhis für Indien verglichen wurde.

Lutz van Dijk zeigt seinen Lesern die kulturelle Vielfalt Afrikas: von der Kultur des Islam im Norden nach Schwarzafrika im Süden...

In Mandela, former foreign correspondent Bob Crew demystifies the icon and his legacy. After over a decade of travels in South Africa, Crew seeks truth in the unexpected details of the lives of Mandela and current South African president Jacob Zuma, comparing them to other world icons in order to bring a new understanding of their legacies to Western listeners.

Tough, spirited, and fiercely independent Abigail is brought as a teenager to London from Nigeria by relatives who attempt to force her into prostitution. She flees, struggling to find herself in the shadow of a strong but dead mother. In spare yet haunting and lyrical prose reminiscent of Marguerite Duras, Abani brings to life a young woman who lives with a strength and inner light that will enlighten and uplift the listener.

The gripping story of 200 freed Mississippi slaves who sailed to Liberia to build a new colony - where the colonists' repression of the native tribes would beget a tragic cycle of violence. When a wealthy Mississippi cotton planter named Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves' passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa.

La historia que se esconde detrás de una de las mejores novelas de aventuras de todos los tiempos. En 1875, Henry Rider Haggard escribe Las minas del rey Salomón, probablemente una de las mejores novelas de aventuras de todos los tiempos. Muchos intuyen pero pocos conocen el correlato histórico que se oculta detrás de esta novela: la lucha entre colonos ingleses y holandeses contra las tribus africanas por el control de los recursos naturales y de los territorios.

This eye-opening personal history tells the story of an American college professor's 20-year engagement with a thriving Africa rarely encountered by Western visitors, including an extraordinary connection to poets across the continent. At once adventurous, spiritual, political, dreamlike, and humorous, Joining Africa is a unique documentary of a journey through the continent, including an intense five-year encounter with economically struggling but culturally fertile Eritrea. The Africa presented here is neither a postcolonial study nor an exotic tourist destination.

After Tripoli declared war on the United States in 1801, Barbary pirates captured 300 U.S. sailors and marines. President Jefferson sent navy squadrons to the Mediterranean, but he also authorized a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. He chose an unlikely diplomat, William Eaton, to lead the mission, but before Eaton departed, Jefferson grew wary of the affair and withdrew his support.

Captain David Grief, South Pacific tycoon, owns plantations and trading stations from New Guinea to Samoa, pearling fisheries in the Paumotus, and rubber acreages in the Louisiades. His own vessels recruit contract labor, and he operates three steamers on ocean runs. He came to the South Seas at the age of 20 and, blessed with a blond skin impervious to tropical rays, became browner through two decades as a true "son of the sun". At 40 years of age, he looks no more than 30.

In 2006, the Wall Street pioneer and philanthropist Ray Chambers flicked through some holiday snapshots taken by a friend and remarked on the placid beauty of a group of sleeping Malawian children. "They're not sleeping," his friend told him. "They're in malarial comas. A few days later, they were all dead." This moment sparked Chambers' determination to coordinate an unprecedented, worldwide effort to eradicate a disease that has haunted humanity since before the advent of medicine.

America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation’s pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparent - that far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts.

In 1940 a group of artists, sculptors, film makers, theatre designers and set painters came together to form the Camouflage Unit. Led by Major Geoffrey Barkas and including among their number the internationally renowned stage magician Jasper Maskelyne, the unit's projects became a crucial battlefield weapon.