An excellent addition to any personal or library bookshelf! Very interesting text and stories accompany an abundance of quality photograhs with an appealing layout. Highly recommend.

This book demonstrates conclusively that the World Bank has done little more than shore up colonial economic structures. However, instead of stopping there, Brown goes on to demonstrate that African institutions and progressive NGOs provide an excellent alternative to the World Bank model -- an alternative that stresses development led by the people of Africa themselves.

Africa's Great Rift Valley written and photographed by Nigel Pavitt is a wonderfully illustrated book on the fauna and flora of Africa's Great Rift Valley. This valley is most unique in it's layout, as the largest, longest and most prominent feature of its kind on earth.

The Grerat Rift Valley spans over 3,400 miles and incorporates land from Ethiopia in the north to Mozambique in the south. Elevation range fron 500 feet below sea level to mountains over 16,000 feet. This part of Africa is presumed to be where mankind started and evolved, from the discovery by the Leakeys, Louis and Mary, Richard and Meave who found the oldest partial skeleton of mankinds ancesters. The fauna are noteable as well and includes chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas and there is the greatest concentration of grassland animals found on Earth.

The pictures are spectacular and they tell a fantastic story of the geological evolution of this area from salt brines to volcanic activity to some of the most spectacular vistas on Earth. This book is well-written and tells an engaging story of one of the most interesting features on planet Earth. Few books about places in the world contain what this book does you'll find it well worth the money for information about geological and evolutionary history, not to mention exploration and conquest, but most importantly there are stories of the peoples living close to nature that are very engrossing.

You'll go back and reread parts of this book as I have to view and understand what Dr. David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley found so captivating as they traveled the lenght and breadth of the Rift Valley.

Scott Strauss and David K. Leonard marvelously delinate the African quagmire with a sense of optomism and honesty. The book boldy breaks down a myriad of preconcieved misconceptions and offers a scholarly aproach that shows the potential for a rebirth of the African continent. Many thanks to these brilliant men.

'As the seasons changed, an infinite green morphed in a
thousand colors much like the trials and errors of a people
imposing passed-down shards of Africa memory onto each and
every day'-- John Hatch

Africa Love, the sophomore offering to Hatch's Mississippi
Swamp, is the continuing story of Rose and Cicero Morgan.
Cicero learned politics in the Confederate President's family.
Rose had been interned on the Davis Plantation by General Grant
preceding the battle of Vicksburg. Both Rose and Cicero refused
to become victims of the free enterprise's spin on freedom
following the Civil War. Rose ran away from her owner seeking
refuge in the swamp. Cicero, who had been elected to Mississippi's
post-war government, moved into the swamp to join Rose.

The 'Africanamericans' as they were called entered the swamp during
the war, as an alternative to turning their lives over to someone
else. Hatch offers an array of characters, as he brings to life the
offsprings of Rose, Cicero, and Cicero's sister. He peppers the pages
with some historical giants, Booker T. Washington and Frederick
Douglas. He also introduces many unknown people of color who helped
create a magnanimous history. People like the election workers led
by a Black sheriff named John Brown who pursued a sharecropper's
boycott until insurrection strikes in a little-known piece of
history which resulted in the Friars Point Massacre.

Rose and Cicero renamed the swamp 'Africa', because they still clung
desperately to customs from which they had been taken. And there is
much controversy over the fact that this prime real estate is owned
by the former slaves, and wanted by the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley
Railroad. The dwellers of the town, now being run by the off-springs,
know that the birth of the railroad would certainly be the demise of
their town.

Africa Love, set in 1886, is an indepth account of life during and
after the Civil War. This story shares some tragic and some
enthralling events surrounding one of the darkest periods of American
history. This book is an excellent cronicle of this particular era,
weaving fiction and history in a profound way, as it amplifies the
plight of people of color. This is must read for history buffs.

Reviewed by aNN Brown
The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

When my son started to show an interest in animals, I went out and got this book. It was the first time in his 20 months on earth, that he sat down and paid attention to an entire book without trying to tear the pages, or without just simply finding something else to do. After I finished reading the book to him, and showing him the fantastic, real-life pictures, he was still sitting there waiting for me to turn the page to another picture of an animal. While my 20-month old enjoyed the real-life pictures, my 3 and-a-half year old enjoyed the reading, also. The author's words are informative, but not too deep or complicated. After checking this book out from the library, I had to go out and purchase it because I knew it was a must-have in my home, and my son would have missed the book terribly if I had returned it to the library and not brought it back home.

The author, Christopher Spring is Curator, Department of Ethnography, of the British Museum. Thus he is well accquainted with the sources and has made excellent use of first-hand accounts, museum and sales catalogs, and ethnographical and typological studies to synthesize this general overview of the subject. He states in his introduction: "This book is primarily intended to celebrate African artistry and ingenuity. It also attempts to show the way in which arms and armor are incorporated into the complex material systems which express the structure of non-industrial societies....I believe that to underrate the significance of these artefacts within the societies which produced them would be to overlook a whole range of human endeavour and activity." The book contains a Forward, Introduction and eight chapters on each cultural region of Africa. 1.Arab and Berber--North Africa and the Sahara, 2. Knights of the Savanna--Warfare in Sudanic Africa, 3. Forest Kingdoms of West Africa, 4. The Shining Mystery--Throwing Knives of Africa, 5. Royal Blacksmiths--the Kuba Kingdom and the Congo Basin, 6. the Horn of Africa, 7. Cattle and Conflict--East African Pastorialists and Their Neighbors. 8. Mfecane--The Zulu and the Nguni Diaspora. There are 30 color and 130 grey scale.illlustrations. Biblio and index. Though some historians and ethnographers divide the continent of Africa into North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, referring to the latter as Black Africa (in French, l'Afrique noire), and omitting the former as a subject of African studies, preferring to include it in studies of Mediterrainea and Europe proper, there is just as much justification for including in this work, as for leaving out, the Maghreb area of Northwest Africa, conquered by the Islamic expansion and still ruled by descendents of the followers of the Prophet--there has always been trade and conquest across the Sahara and up and down the Nile Valley. In fact, what is known today as Morocco leather, is actually a product of the Arabized black cultures of the northern Nigerian area of today. Their weapons and fighting arts are covered in Chapter Two. The only chapter which covers more than one culture is Four, which describes the famous fabulously shaped (to European eyes) throwing knives. One of the major points made by the author and by the writer of the Forward, is that, in contrast to the major civilizations of Eurasia and the Americas, which, once they organized the means of production, so that a surplus could support a "non-producer" class of rulers, priests, and administrators, there arose a tradition of "art for art's sake." The artistic tradition led to all sorts of misconceptions when the European expansionists encountered the indigenous peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the material culture is and was expressed in a holistic manner, in which weapons and other material objects such as statues and ceremonial masks and clothing , however fantastically adorned or shaped, considered with a European's sensibility, were not created with any sort of artistic (art for art's sake) sensibility. Thus the copying of African sculptural forms by the Eurocentric artistic avant garde in the beginning of the twentieth century, was a total misreading of the intent of the creators. The other major point the author makes is that when the Eurocentric aesthetic sensibility was applied to African material culture, one, items were devoid of context, and, two, in many cases ignored both weapons and edged tools; which in some cases are the same thing. This sensibility says essentially "war is bad, therefore the tools of war are bad.'" (Compare this attitude opposed by major collections of medieval European arms and armor, including that held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) The other reason for of this omission could be "Work is sweaty and sweat is nasty, therefore tools are nasty and unworthy of study." Fortunately this sensibility is today recognized for the fallacy it is. A society which collects such material culture as gasoline pump globes, Pez dispensers, and all the other marvelous junk of our civilization can hardly ignore items seriously created for culturally significant purposes, whatever their symbolism or usage. In summary, this book is a comprehensive survey of its subject with a definite point of view which I agree with, but it would be none the less valuable as a synthesis if I did not. And there are plenty of leads to further study.

The most striking feature of AFRICAN CANVAS is the close up detail and large pictures of exterior and interior West African mud house design. Some pottery design is also featured. Colors are mostly earth toned because natural pigments are used. A close-up and personal look at this beautiful art form, and a good resource for folks interested in ethnology and in African design.

This book contains valuable information on the history of African film from colonial times to the present. It explains why film production in Africa is what it is today, from region to region. This is mainly a book on African film history, so reviews of films are not emphasized

The book begins with a clear and erudite essay on the follies of eurocentrism and other roadblocks into the study of African History. It then follows with a short explanation of the sources for african history (Roman, Arabic, African ect). And then comes the great part. Page after page of first hand accounts of african cultures and civilization. Descriptions of an ancient world from those who actually were there. The stories of warriors, scholars, merchents and emporors. Even if this was fiction it would still be great! From Ancient nubia and ethiopia, right up to modern day africa. This book is a must have, must read, must buy. But this book you will not regret it! Buy Now!