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Books: Text Books: Africa
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrongby James W. Loewen List Price: $16.00 Available from Amazon $10.08 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Sociology professor Loewen lambastes history textbooks as both too inaccurate and too bland to engage students. Copyright 1996 Reed business Information, Inc. From Booklist When textbook gaffes make news, as with the tome that explained that the Korean War ended when Truman dropped the atom bomb, the expeditious remedy would be to fire the editor. Loewen would rather hire a new team of authors bent on the pursuit of context instead of factoids. In Loewen's ideal text, events and people illuminating the multicultural holy trinity of race, gender, and social class would predominate over the fixation on heroes and acts of government. Such is the mood adopted throughout this critique of 12 American history texts in current use. Vetting 10 topics they commonly address--from the Pilgrims to the Vietnam War--Loewen bewails a long train of alleged omissions and distortions. To account for the deplorable situation, he offers this quasi-Marxist explanation: "Perhaps we are all dupes, manipulated by elite white male capitalists who orchestrate how history is written as part of their scheme to perpetuate their own power and privilege at the expense of the rest of us." Certainly students' appalling ignorance of history is troublesome, and broken families and excessive TV viewing are at least the equals of white male conspirators as the cause. However, libraries located where dissatisfaction with textbooks exists should be interested in Loewen's critique. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. |
Lonely Planet Africa on a Shoestring (Lonely Planet Africa on a Shoestring)by Kevin Anglin, Becca Blond, and Jean-Bernard Carillet List Price: $33.99 Available from Amazon $21.41 On 7-21-2006
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Lonely Planet Healthy Travel Africa (Lonely Planet Healthy Travel Guides Africa)by Isabelle Young Available from Amazon $5.95 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description Getting the most out of your travels means staying healthy. Healthy Travel Africa is a user-friendly guide to minimising health risks for travellers to all parts of Africa, including Egypt. Written by Dr Isabelle Young, with a team of travel health experts, Healthy Travel Africa provides advice on planning your trip, staying healthy while travelling, and what to do if you run into problems.
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Lonely Planet Southern Africa (Lonely Planet Southern Africa)by Deanna Swaney, Mary Fitzpatrick, Paul Greenway, and Andrew Stone List Price: $29.99 Available from Amazon $18.89 On 7-21-2006
See Item's Page Book Description Coverage: Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe Southern Africa is an extraordinary and varied region. Explore its coral reefs and mountain peaks, fast towns and ghost towns, red deserts and Cape vineyards with this indispensable guide.
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Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mindby Curtis A. Keim Available from Amazon $31.00 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description For most Americans, the mention of Africa immediately conjures up images of safaris, ferocious animals, strangely dressed "tribesmen," and impenetrable jungles. Few think to question these perceptions, or how they came to be so deeply lodged in the collective American consciousness. Curtis Keim's Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind looks at the historical evolution of this mindset, examining the role that popular media play in the creation of our mental images of Africa. Keim addresses the most prevalent myths and preconceptions about Africa that Americans subscribe to, and demonstrates how these prevent a true understanding of the enormously diverse people and cultures of Africa. The book is not specifically about Africa, but about thinking about Africa. Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind is a fascinating look at our stereotypes about Africa, and where they come from. |
The Cold War: A Historyby Martin Walker List Price: $16.00 Available from Amazon $11.20 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Walker, Washington bureau chief for Britain's Guardian , here traces the course of the Cold War from Yalta in 1945 through the Korean War, the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontations, Vietnam, the "New Cold War" during the Reagan administration, the advent of glasnost and perestroika under Gorbachev and the "year of miracles" (1989) which brought down the Berlin Wall. The author is concerned with demonstrating, first, that the superpowers found limited responses to crises (the Berlin blockade and airlift didn't grow into a direct military confrontation; the Korean War didn't spread throughout Asia) and, second, how the stability resulting from the Cold War balance of power set the stage for a new international economic system. This cogent reevaluation of the Cold War as a form of economic competition argues that its end marked a shift away from the geo-strategic toward the geo-economic and an accelerated expansion of world trade. Copyright 1994 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal With the Cold War over, a spate of books are beginning to appear trying to explain what it all meant. Like Edward Pessen's recent Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War or H.W. Brands's The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (both LJ 11/1/93), Walker, U.S. bureau chief for London's the Guardian, goes over familiar ground, treading the same turf diplomatic historians have charted for the past 20 years. For an experienced journalist, Walker's prose is restrained and sometimes tedious. His most interesting point is his comparison of the last years of Brezhnev's rule with that of George Bush's presidency, arguing that both administrations dealt feebly with domestic issues, much to the detriment of their respective populations. For Walker, America's challenge will be how it can best fight the new war for control of the global economy. For general collections and for those emphasizing contemporary history and politics. Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames Copyright 1994 Reed business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. |
The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despairby Martin Meredith List Price: $35.00 Available from Amazon $22.05 On 7-21-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. The value of Meredith's towering history of modern Africa rests not so much in its incisive analysis, or its original insights; it is the sheer readability of the project, combined with a notable lack of pedantry, that makes it one of the decade's most important works on Africa. Spanning the entire continent, and covering the major upheavals more or less chronologically—from the promising era of independence to the most recent spate of infamies (Rwanda, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Sierra Leone)—Meredith (In the Name of Apartheid) brings us on a journey that is as illuminating as it is grueling. The best chapters, not surprisingly, deal with the countries that Meredith knows intimately: South Africa and Zimbabwe; he is less convincing when discussing the francophone West African states. Nowhere is Meredith more effective than when he gives free rein to his biographer's instincts, carefully building up the heroic foundations of national monuments like Nasser, Nkrumah, and Haile Selassie—only to thoroughly demolish those selfsame mythical edifices in later chapters. In an early chapter dealing with Biafra and the Nigerian civil war, Meredith paints a truly horrifying picture, where opportunities are invariably squandered, and ethnically motivated killings and predatory opportunism combine to create an infernal downward spiral of suffering and mayhem (which Western intervention only serves to aggravate). His point is simply that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely—which is why the rare exceptions to that rule (Senghor and Mandela chief among them) are all the more remarkable. Whether or not his pessimism about the continent's future is fully warranted, Meredith's history provides a gripping digest of the endemic woes confronting the cradle of humanity. (July) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* When the decolonization of European empires in Africa began 50 years ago, the process was greeted with jubilation and immense hope for the future. Blessed with bountiful natural resources and led by Western-educated elites, the continent seemed to have a realistic chance to create stable, prosperous, democratic societies. Why did it all go wrong, and can it be made right? Meredith is a journalist, biographer, and historian who has written extensively on modern African history. His massive but very readable examination of African history over the past century unfolds like a drawn-out tragedy. Of course, the arrogance and ignorance of European masters planted the seeds of many of Africa's current problems. But Meredith refuses to let Africans off the hook for the endemic violence, corruption, and political repression that plague so many African states. While he pays tribute to icons like Mandela and Senghor, his contempt for the venality and worship of power that has characterized so many leaders from Nasser to Mugabe is palatable and justified by extensive documentation. One hopes for shreds of optimism for the future, but Meredith remains skeptical. This is a brilliant and vitally important work for all who wish to understand Africa and its beleaguered people. Jay Freeman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
Healing Wisdom of Africaby Malidoma Patrice Some List Price: $15.95 Available from Amazon $10.37 On 7-21-2006
See Item's Page Book Description A fascinating, detailed journey through the traditional healing practices of West Africa by a beloved shaman and scholar. "Profoundly wise and fascinating . . . "--Alice Walker "An amazing bridge over the chasm of modern isolation."--Jack Kornfield Through The Healing Wisdom of Africa, readers can come to understand that the life of indigenous and traditional people is a paradigm for an intimate relationship with the natural world that both surrounds us and is within us. The book is the most complete study of the role ritual plays in the lives of African people--and the role it can play for seekers in the West. * illustrated with 8 pages of black-and-white photographs About The Author A gifted medicine man of the Dagara tribe, Malidoma Patrice Some divides his time between his home in Oakland, California, Europe, and the nations of Africa. |
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