A thorough and demanding book which reveals to the world many facts and issues needing attention from those seeking intallectual stiumlation.

Written in the form of letters to the people in her life closest to her, these essays blaze with the intensity of life deeply felt and faith forged in the crucible of base cruelty, soaring beauty and redemption that is South Africa. Having stripped away the usual academic lingo, this theologian, who describes herself as a cultural hybrid and a feminist, takes on such subjects as cultural and racial identity, political, theological and physical domination, and the paradox of the presence of an all-powerful and compassionate God in a world riven by suffering from AIDS, misogyny, torture, injustice, hunger, and hatred. Ms. Ackermann refuses to look away from suffering or be paralyzed by her anger, or to take refuge in apathy or denial. All suffering and helplessness are held up to the example of scripture, most particularly the poetry of suffering and praise in the psalms, and in the passion of Jesus. This is a book for readers whose need is to explore the wilderness more than for those who demand comfort and certainty.

Out of print or not, I have no doubt that "Agatha Moudio's son" belongs among the classics of World Literature.

Well above 30 years have passed since this novel fetched a prestigious prize for African literature, founding the fame of its author in large parts of francophone West Africa and among connoisseurs worldwide. It is fresh as ever and fun to read even for the casual consumer. At the same time, it has many dimensions that unfold as one gets back to it again and again.

The story is told from the angle of a young fisherman in a coastal village in Cameroon. He never gets over his fascination for Agatha, an independent young woman with witch like qualities, such as making rain at convenient occasions. In spite of fierce resistance from his mother, he ends up taking in Agatha as his second wife, after obediently establishing his first marriage with Fanny, a "good girl" from a neighbor village. Soon after joining the family as a co-wife, Agatha gives birth to a baby boy whose skin is unusually light and doesn't turn to the "local color" even after months....

The reader comes to see polygamy and other approaches to life in the African village in the characters' own frame of logic - not as exotic phenomena, but not idealized, either. Among other things, the book, as well as the song that was based on it and became an earworm in West Africa over decades, is a superb play with the spectrum of colors. Agatha makes her man "see all the colors". She gives him a son who is not of the "right" color to be his biological child - but a child is a child, whether their color is black, white, red, green or yellow.

During my work in Africa, I have experienced how extracts from this book and other Bebey lyrics (including some of his characteristic witty, philosophical, story-telling songs) instantly built bridges of communication across very diverse sets of people. His stories, and the way they are told, are quintessentially African, and at the same time, universally human.

An introduction to Aid & Reform in Africa by James Wolfensohn points out that for aid programmes to succeed they must have a country-owned development strategy. This point is reiterated throughout the ten case studies compiled in this book edited by Shanta Devarajan at the World Bank. This book offers a thorough review of the interrelationships involved in assessing the effectiveness of aid in Africa. It compares the degree of political and economic reform and their relationship to the success of aid programmes in the Ivory Coast, Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Given the relatively even distribution of aid amongst all the countries reviewed, there remains a wide disparity in the success of aid programmes. Each case study is written by nationals of the respective countries who offer first-hand evaluations of the respective aid situations. The conclusions derived from these studies offer excellent guidance for the future direction of aid to the African continent.

Eric Hammel provides an excellent reference source to the European Air War. The main body of the text chronicals events from war's beginning to Germany's surrender on May 9, 1945. The basic concept is straightforward: to provide a basic sketch of daily operations in Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa. Of particular note is Hammel's Introductory chapter, where he examines the evolution of American fighter doctrine (particularly as it relates to the "Self-defending bomber") and his pinpoint analysis of America's strategic bombing initiative. Despite its obviously reference orientation, nothing Hammel writes makes for dry reading. recommended! For more military aviation reviews see the "WWII Aviation Booklist" at: http://www.ampsc.com/~prophet/booklist.html

Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity ranks as one of the best publications i've ever read. It's up there with "Dandelion Wine" by Ray Bradberry, and "Jenny Jameson sings the blues" by Jenna herself. Its probably better than the bible

I have always been Paton's admire. His tool of words in acting against the injustices that took part in South Africa, draw me closer to his books.

Finally, someone decides to honor this unbeleagured figure. Our white captain!

I have followed Alex la Guma's fiction and this is the best critical work I have read on the author. Others tend to be too simplistic -- simply biographical or they fall into essentialist terminology. I have read them but been disappointed by them because La Guma, a political writer, a member of the ANC and a writer whose work was banned under apartheid, deserved so much more detailed consideration. It isn't enough to tell us that he wrote against apartheid but how he did so so effectively. Yousaf has written a thorough and thoughtful book. Reading it helped me to look again at novels I know and see new things and read them through new ideas. The book also helped me to see that reading people like Frantz Fanon or Mikhail Bakhtin, critics I have found difficult, can actually help you to read novels in thought-provoking ways. The bibliography is really useful too. Yousaf uses the theorists, but to effect and never lets them get in the way of the novels themselves.

This is a great introduction to La Guma for new readers and for readers like myself, it augments what we already know and advances our thinking on a neglected South African writer.

I cannot understand why Heinemann who publish La Guma's fiction should have decided to price this book so high. From experience, I would say that it would work well for students of African Literature, especially South African Studies. But it would need to be in a cheaper format, like the fiction.

Algeria 1830-2000: A Short History directly addresses the history and root causes of the deadly, long-term civil war that has killed at least 80,000 people out of this nation of 28 million. Written with painstaking detail about the 1954-1962 Algerian civil war and the nation's history since its independence, Algeria 1830-2000 features college-level narration and analysis supplemented by tables, a very convenient acronym list, a 26-page chronology, and an index. Benjamin Stora (Professor of History at the University of Paris, Saint Denis) has written a new introductory chapter on Algeria's colonial period (1830-1954) and revised the final section with up-to-date information, making Algeria 1830-2000 a clear, detailed, rigorously factual, and up-to-date account of this troubled nation from 1830 down to the present day.

This delightful book is an excellent cross cultural experience for both parent and child. The book not only allows its readers to taste the Islamic Berber culture of Morocco, but also teaches valuable lessons in family values, friendship, self reliance, and faith in God and nature....