This book is a compelling read. To those who like to read about the desert, about different people, about hardship and courage, this is it. The best book I have read.

It was out of print for quite some time and it's a big relief it's back. Buy it while you can because there is nothing better.

Picked this up about two weeks ago, and found it hard to put it down. Story is of Hanley and his time as a British officer in Somanli in WWII, then a visit back there in 1962. Then his time in Kenya. Wonderful views of the tribes, and what they could become after the war. Should have been read before our 1990 Black Hawk Down story. Always wonderful to read about what was, and then to see what has become of a country.

Then his observations of Kenya, and Masai and the other tribes. Good story of the Indians and Whites leaving Kenya in the late 1960s.

"Warriors at Work" examines the complete functioning of the Guinean people's struggle against Portuguese imperialism. Brilliantly noting the contribution and leadership of Amilcar Cabral, Dhada, as Cabral would have approved, focuses on the mass popular contribution and national role in the process of liberation. Dhada clearly reveals the brilliance of the PAIGC effort. The fighters of Guinea while battling Portuguese aggression simultaneously created a functioning relevant and indigenously produced nation state that would replace the Portuguese colonial machine. Dhada's focus on the mechanics of this process give us the most insightful view of what made the Guinean revolution effective, unique and a theoretical model for all revolutionaries to consider.

Amilcar Cabral one of the greatest minds of the twenteth century. A complete revolutionary. His works need to be studied by every African. He is a guide for the future for the success of Cabo Verde and Guinea Bissau if they would follow his example to overcome the colonialist mentality and to change the minds and to become liberated for a new freedom of thought,for a democracy and economic development of Guinea Bissau and Cabo Verde only in their unity in the struggle for success. One can not make it without the other. The youth of both countries must come together in the movement of JAAC. The future of Africa depends on it.

We Are The Poors: Community Struggles In Post-Apartheid South Africa by South African educator, journalist, and community activist Ashwin Desai is an informed and informative explanation of how the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa in 1994 failed to end the conditions of economic, social, and political inequality for the oppressed majority of South African blacks. Nonetheless, new forms of solidarity and resistance to conditions of inequality have emerged, principally in the form of new and dynamic political identities as reflected in the growth of community movements, eventually coming together in massive anti-government protests at the time of the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. We Are The Poors is a significant and timely contribution to contemporary South African studies.

Desai's book is about elderly women who will put their bodies between their neighbour's house and the men with guns and dogs and sunglasses who have come to effect another eviction. It's about the ecology of the neighbourhood and the struggles to constitute the people stuck on the wrong side of the razorwire into movements. It is about fighting and tenderness and coming to Durban.

Desai's story starts in Chatsworth, Durban. Here the new South Africa meant unemployment for the poor after 10 000 jobs in the clothing industry were sacrificed to The Market when tariffs protecting our market from sweatshop imports were removed 4 years ahead of the WTO schedule. For many this was followed by disconnections from electricity and water and then evictions from their homes as the Durban Metro began to reorganise the provision of basic, life sustaining services in accordance with 'international norms' and under the cold logic of profit. Desai tells us how a movement of the poor was built in Chatsworth, how it spread to other townships in Durban, drew in students and workers, made connections with similar movements developing in Johannesburg and Cape Town, put somewhere between 20 000 and 30 000 people on the streets outside the UN conference on racism in Durban last year and became part of the global movement of movements against the subordination of all aspects of society to The Market.

All these years after Machiavelli and Sartre and Fanon much academic work continues to flee the disorder and mess of life for the more comfortable worlds of abstracted empiricism and theory where the sterile manipulation of numbers or words becomes a self-referential end in-itself. Desai's book has no elaborate graphs or references to Homi K. Bhabha. Numbers and theories are only employed to illuminate lived experience. This book, with its stories of children prostituting themselves to stave off their family's eviction and mothers fighting off the police, can not be reduced to a power point presentation. Desai describes it as "journalism - an account from the frontlines of the establishment's 'undeclared war' on the poor."

Scholars like Patrick Bond and Hein Marais have published valuable critiques of the herding of the energies and hopes of the democratic movements in to the Market's corral. And David McDonald and James Kilgore (writing as John Pape) have shown that in the post-apartheid era up to 10 million South Africans have been disconnected from water; the same number have been disconnected from electricity; a further 2 million people have been evicted from their homes and 1.5 million have had their property seized for failure to pay their water and electricity bills. McDonald and Kilgore have also found that the majority could not pay their water and electricity bills, that many of those who do pay do so at the expense of things like school fees and health care and so the idea of a 'culture of non-payment' should be seen as, at best, a myth. They also show that none of this is necessary and that this assault on the poor it is a direct consequence of the shift away from policies based on the principle of cross-subsidisation to ensure sustainable access to services by poorer citizens and towards policies that aim to generate profit by recovering the full cost of the services provided to each customer, including installation costs. The rich had the installation of their basic services subsidised by apartheid many years ago and so what the World Bank calls 'good public fiscal practice' means that electricity costs 30% more in Soweto than in Sandton and schools in poor communities in Durban have their water disconnected in the midst of cholera epidemic.

Radical thought usually takes the oppressive power of the state and the market as its focus. And explaining the nature of the structural violence in and from which the oppressed must make their lives is important work. But Desai, like Frantz Fanon and the Italian Autonomist School, does something different. He begins with the creative energies of the oppressed. And so he gives us storms and tributaries and rivers of struggle. We discover the Hindu festival of light, Diwali, re-imagined with the electricity disconnecting Durban Metro cast as the villain of darkness. And there is Psyches, the rapper who makes beautiful the heroes of the latest ugly clash with the police; Sifiso Sithole a polite young man who usually reconnects a few people to the electricity grid before settling down to his homework in the afternoons; the UDW students, steeled by the murder of one of their number by the police while protesting the exclusion of poor students from their university, who defend fragile new born spaces for critical thought and action from "the goons from the ANC youth league" and the mothers and grandmothers across the country, like Mama Manqele in Chatsworth and Mevrou Samsodien in Taflesig, who rebel because obedience can mean disaster and even death.

The movements encountered in this book are familiar in that they are a return to the non-racialism of the UDF (as opposed to the longstanding multi-racialism and more recent bougoise nationalism of the ANC) but excitingly strange in that their aspirations are not to seize political power but rather to diffuse it with the aim of creating neighbourhoods in which individuals and communities can flourish. But the movements in this book are perhaps at their most unfamiliar and challenging when, in the words of Mpumalanga township activist Maxwell Cele, it becomes clear that "No one is in charge of the protests, except the anger and hunger in every person."

There are a few flaws in the editing and the layout of the book. The misphrasing of a sentence in the introduction that results in the number of people who lost jobs between 1996 and 2001 appearing to be a statistic for 2001 alone is particularly unfortunate. But the significance of this book, with its urgent, occasionally poetic and probably rushed passion that has evoked the feel of Fanon's Wretched of the Earth for more than one reviewer, is not exhausted by its novelty as the first book on the social movements of the post-apartheid era. This book matters because in an age where the human is deeply buried under a dead but respectable technicism it pulsates, rudely, with life.

White Fire has everything I look for in a novel--engrossing plot, characters that come alive, and a vividly drawn setting that allows me to escape for a few hours while learning something new. I'm looking forward to reading more books by Stuart Murray.

Author, journalist, and editor Stuart Murray has written a superbly crafted historical novel capturing the yesteryear feel of 1828 in southern Africa. Dirk Arendt is guiding an archaeological expedition toward a lost city near Zululand. One of the part is an agent for a ruthless secret brotherhood in search of an ancient amulet, thought to be in the hands of Shaka, founder and lord of the newly unified Zulu nation. Dirk's expedition arrives just as rebels are about to overthrow Shaka, and the rebels also desire to posses the Amulet of White Fire. Meanwhile to the southwest, the first Cape Colony Dutch pioneers have launched a journey northward into the wilderness in search of the Promised Land. These independent minded Boers include Dirk's own parents and Rachel Drente. These "voortrekkers" are marching straight into the turmoil and civil war between Zulu regiments and the conspirators who are seeking to overthrow Shaka and seize the amulet. White Fire is a stirring, very highly recommended, action-adventure oriented historical novel which is enhanced for the readers pleasure with a meticulous attention to accurate detail throughout.

i am currently taking a comparative study course on new world slavery, and this book interested me. i enjoyed this book.

This is a seminal study which compares the development of white supremacy in Southern Africa and North America. It is well researched and provides the reader with an insightful analysis into race relations in these two regions. Although the book was published in 1982, the analysis continues to be current and essential to those readers who wish to understand the historic context of this important subject.

This is the most beautifully illustrated and comprehensive guide I've found for the wildlife of southern Africa. The invertebrate info is hard to find elsewhere, and the fact that this guide includes plants is a welcome bonus. If you buy one guide to carry with you on your trip, this should be it.

While visiting So.Africa, I had a million questions on what I looking at. I found this book and carried it with me throughout the trip. When we went on game runs, I would check off what we saw and make reference notes (e.g. the Baboons were eating Jackalberries - I could reference both the mammal and the tree section). The variety of birds in the country (over 900) was astounding and having the book made it much more fun and interesting to look up. This is the only book I found that combined lower invertabrates, spiders and other arachnids, insects (including a large butterfly collection), fish, frogs, reptiles, birds, mammals,grasses-sedges-ferns&fungi,wild flowers, trees. Several people on the tour had me write down what we saw so they in turn could get this book and make notes. A good book combining everything in one neat package for those who like to play outside!

This has to be one of the best books on wine ever published. The photographs are outstanding and I particularly liked the interviews with wine makers. I can recommend this book to anyone interested in wines, in book layout, in photography AND in the Southern Cape wine reagons. Excellent fare.

This is probably the most beautiful book on wine I have ever encountered. I love it! Although it focuses primarily on the South African wine industry, the information on grape growing, winemaking and brandy making is really complete and relevant to any winemaking region. The photography in this book is of the highest quality and is simply breathtaking. Anyone who has visited South Africa will agree that it has probably the most beautiful wine region in the world. This book's pictures tell the same story with excellent photography. Oh and by the way, it is the official textbook of the Cape Wine Academy in South Africa (sure doesn't look like your typical textbook -too colorful and easy to read!) I would recommend this book to ANY wine lover since a lot can be learned from it in a fun way. Makes a stunning 'coffee table' book.

The reason I like this book is the beautiful illustrations of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the different gods of the Egyptian pantheon. Ms. Lattimore usesthe correct historical terms while telling a good story. I use this story every year in my classroom as one tool to enrich my students' knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture. Each page is a learning experience for my sixth graders as they identify the different parts of the illustrations and its relationship to story. The Afterword gives details about Ancient Egypt.

My kindergarten age child is burning with passion for anythingabout ancient Egypt. We enjoyed this story immensely and have read itmany times. Each time, we discover new meanings in the detailedillustrations and decodable hieroglyphics....

The story and picturesbring many elements of Egytian mythology alive in ways thatnon-fiction can't. My son and I have read lots of recent non-fictionabout Ancient Egypt. From our other reading it seems to me that, inThe Winged Cat, mythical story elements hew closely to what is knownabout Ancient Egyptian theology. END

Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire represents the crowning achievement of Ms. Drusilla Dunjee Houston. The work was originally published in Oklahoma City in 1926. It is the first known attempt by a Black woman, and perhaps anyone, to produce a multi-volume work on African history told from an African perspective.

Ms. Houston herself was an educator, journalist and historian. She spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Arizona and succumbed to tuberculosis in Phoenix, Arizona in 1941.

Her work is broad and comprehensive and was quite advanced for its time. Its audience was not confined to scholars but the layperson, particularly Black folk, who were in need of a accurate tonic to boost Black self-esteem. It retains a powerful value even today, more than seventy years since its initial publication.

Western civilization has grudgingly recognized that homo sapiens evolved in Africa, within the last 40 years through the work of Richard and Louis Leakey and the discovery of the "Lucy" skelital evidence in Ethiopia.

However, Drusilla Huston's book copiously documents legends of of African culture before the dessication of the Sahara and the Egyto-Nubian desserts. She continued with ancient references to the ancient Kushite and Ethiopian civilizations and Kings refered to by Homer, Heroditus, Diodorus, Massey Champoleon and others to flesh out the stories of the Nubian, Nahesey, Napatan, Meroic, Alumic, Egyptian, Summarian and Ethiopean nations over 75 years ago.

It is therefore, a prophetic and profound example of pioneering African-American scholarship operating in a bleak and hostile environment over many decades. It's veracity is only enhanced and fortified with the passage of time and recent production of books such as "Black Athena" by Martin Bernal, "Civilization or Barbarism" by Cheik Anta Diop and the 1996 "African Exodus" by Chris Skinner and "Egypt Revisited" edited by Ivan Van Sertima and numerous others.

I had to read this for an anthropology class prior to visiting Cameroon, little did I know how accurate it would be, I don't even think I grasped the whole story the first time because I had never been in that culture. This is an excellent work, fast reading and very informative. Good for anyone who wants to learn about Cameroonian culture or just another view of the world in general.

Your Madness, Not Mine - A Review. "We're the matches that will light the gunpowder that has been lying cold like ash. If we don't take a step who will . . . ?" This definitive assertion and rhetorical question, posed by an enterprising Beba woman in Juliana Makuchi Nfah Abbenyi's collection of short stories,Your Madness, Not Mine,is evocative of the author's own project which in many ways is as potent and innovative as the above metaphor. To read Makuchi, a Cameroonian woman writer, and postcolonial intelligentsia in the West, is to land at once in a rich, complex and contradictory world, bubbling with tensions ensuing from gender conflicts, polyglossia and constant shiftings of center / periphery, self / other dichotomies. In a span of nine short stories, Makuchi guides us through the contours of her native African land which shares the patriarchal history with the rest of the world, while exposing its own unique gender quarrels, compromises, and victories. The first story, "The Healer", for instance, plays upon the myth of motherhood that is upheld as the major or sole criterion of womanhood in most cases. It shows how a society that sees barren women as a curse, can end up shoving them into the hands of wicked charlatans who cheat them ruthlessly and drive them insane. The title story also has a woman domesticated and deprived of individual freedom by her typically patriarchal husband despite being educated and capable of making financial contributions to the household. But if these are stories of women's biological pathology and gender vulnerability, then in "Election Fever" we have a story of women's manipulative and conniving powers. The grandmother in this story takes her entire family by surprise when she secretively joins many (opposition)political parties and accepts bribery in the shape of cash and Pakistani rice. She also instills a lesson on flippancy and exploitation that leaders and followers mutually play as part of the political game, in her young granddaughter who accompanies her to party meetings. "Bayam Sellam" however, is the story that presents the traditional strength and entrepreneurship of Camaroonian women in the shape of market women. Descendants of strong willed mothers and grandmothers, these market whizzes possess the solidarity and business acumen required to call up a strike and force the government into declaring a state of emergency. If the women in Makuchi's world are economically and politically aware and active, than her men are by no means lacking behind in this arena. They have their own share of pondering and debating over the postcolonial scramble that Camaroon has become since independence in 1960. Hailing from that part of central Africa which has been thrice colonized (Germans, Britishers and French, all had their share of plunder of this land) and is still struggling to wrench free from the clutches of the neocolonial beast gnawing in the shape of capitalist America, the men in these narratives are often concerned about the grim socio-economic fate that awaits them. "American Lottery" and "The Forest Will Claim You Too" are two such stories which delineate the myriad of home grown as well as imposed problems that jitter the heart of this country. Government corruption in particular, and elitist callousness in general, French aggression and racism, in addition to the economic exploitation by next door neighbors like Nigeria, deforestation or "environmental genocide" by both French and Asians, leading to other social hazards like "timber babies", and loss of ancient herbal medicinal provisions are some of the ailments that contribute towards breaking the backbone of Camaroonian economy, and falsifying its persistent efforts towards modernization. No wonder Makuchi blatantly points at the devaluation of the CFA (the Camaroonian currency) and the escalating inflation scenario to be the root cause behind the brain drain that America is enjoying today. The implicit question that lingers right under the narrative surface seems to be: If the "Third World" youth is often eager to have a way out of this labyrinthian hole and aspires for that alluring land of promises, who is to blame? Nonetheless, it is relieving to find that not all Camaroonian youth are attracted to the West. Peter and his friends in "American Lottery", for instance, are well aware of the dilemmas of identity loss, alienation and frustration that are quick to follow the fate of those who turn their face away from the poverty and confusion of motherland in the hope of totally adopting and assimilating a foreign culture. The same densely packed story depicts local riots, curfews and rebellions to be amongst other things that keep Camaroonians perpetually involved in their country's future. Like her themes, Makuchi's images and metaphors are often drawn from both indigenous and foreign sources. So we have palm and plantain, wrappa and nsaa, juxtaposed with the image of the Marlboro man with his will - o'- the - wisp pose and foreign embassies with their whining twining queue of locals. Her stories, with both rural and urban settings also often break into poetic strings of thought and are embellished with sprinklings of the Beba language, some pidgin, Anglophone as well as Francophone diction. Reading these superb pieces of fiction has definitely been a very enriching experience for me. If you are looking for thought provoking yet lucid, and passionately written fictionalized theory, or theorized fiction, then this is the text for you.