Best of
Africa

1987

Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa


Farley Mowat - 1987
    Two 8-page photo inserts.

The Courtneys of Africa: The Burning Shore / Power of the Sword / Rage


Wilbur Smith - 1987
    This trilogy of novels traces the fortunes of twin brothers Sean and Garrick Courtney from the end of the 19th century to the early decades of the 20th and their different struggles to find their place in the land of South Africa at a time of war and of violent struggles within their own family.

Precolonial Black Africa


Cheikh Anta Diop - 1987
    This comparison of the political and social systems of Europe and black Africa from antiquity to the formation of modern states demonstrates the black contribution to the development of Western civilization.

Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985


Martin Bernal - 1987
    The Aryan Model, which is current today, claims that Greek culture arose as the result of the conquest from the north by Indo-European speakers, or "Aryans," of the native "pre-Hellenes." The Ancient Model, which was maintained in Classical Greece, held that the native population of Greece had initially been civilized by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists and that additional Near Eastern culture had been introduced to Greece by Greeks studying in Egypt and Southwest Asia. Moving beyond these prevailing models, Bernal proposes a Revised Ancient Model, which suggests that classical civilization in fact had deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures.This long-awaited third and final volume of the series is concerned with the linguistic evidence that contradicts the Aryan Model of ancient Greece. Bernal shows how nearly 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary has been plausibly derived from two Afroasiatic languages-Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic. He also reveals how these derivations are not limited to matters of trade, but extended to the sophisticated language of politics, religion, and philosophy. This evidence, according to Bernal, confirms the fact that in Greece an Indo-European people was culturally dominated by speakers of Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic.Provocative, passionate, and colossal in scope, this volume caps a thoughtful rewriting of history that has been stirring academic and political controversy since the publication of the first volume.

Peter Capstick's Africa: A Return To The Long Grass


Peter Hathaway Capstick - 1987
    Such highly successful titles as Death in the Long Grass, Death in the Silent Places, and Death in the Dark Continent have established him as the modern-day master of African adventure writing. Sportsman, adventurer, raconteur par excellence, Capstick has in many ways done for contemporary hunting literature what Hemingway and Robert Ruark did in decades past.Until now, Capstick has written post facto about classic hunters of the past and safaris in which he participated as a professional hunter. Peter Capstick's Africa, however, is a very different breed of book: it is the enthralling tale of an entirely new safari, an exciting first-person adventure in which Peter Capstick returns to the long grass for his own dangerous and very personal excursion. The result is a definitive work on African hunting, and one of Peter Capstick's greatest achievements to date.In 1985, Capstick went back into the African bush with two top photographers and a crack professional hunter, It was a venture taken for personal challenge, and for the chance to look anew at what had become of the Africa immortalized in his own earlier works. Peter Capstick's Africa is the chronicle, in text and pictures, of this safari. It is full of the same edge-of-the-seat narration, witty anecdotes, and wry observations that have made Capstick's earlier books so popular. But in addition, it tells the story of Africa today as Capstick sees it: a place that is in some ways the same as, but in many different from, the "dark continent" of even a few years ago. The text of the book has been integrated with the photographs of Paul Kimble and Dick van Niekerk into a lavish full-color production that illustrates Capstick's story in a way his fans have never seen before.Peter Capstick's Africa is a book few lovers of travel and adventure will want to be without.

The Life of My Choice


Wilfred Thesiger - 1987
    As a child in Abyssinia he watched the glorious armies of Ras Tafari returning from hand-to-hand battle, their prisoners in chains; at the age of 23 he made his first expedition into the country of the Danakil, a murderous race among whom a man's status in the tribe depended on the number of men he had killed and castrated. His books, "Arabian Sands" and "The Marsh Arabs", tell of his two sojourns in the Empty Quarter and the Marshes of Southern Iraq. In this autobiography, Wilfred Thesiger highlights the people who most profoundly influenced him and the events which enabled him to lead the life of his choice.

The Fire of Origins


Emmanuel Dongala - 1987
    The story is unified by the actions of one man, Mankunku, a “destroyer,” who is born in mysterious circumstances in a banana plantation and whose identity is as variable as that of his land. This novel traces his development along with that of his unnamed country, from the precolonial era, through the horrors of European subjugation, to independence and the complexities of the postcolonial nation. Along the way, charlatans and saints, workers and bureaucrats, warriors and peacemakers are introduced in a moving mélange of laughter and terror. First published in France in 1987, The Fire of Origins received the 1988 Prix de la Fondation de France and the Grand Prix Litteraire d’Afrique Noire, and has been translated into Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, and Japanese. Mythical, lyrical, powerful, and surreal, it is one of the most ambitious works of fiction to come out of sub-Saharan Africa. This replaces 155652420X.

A Book of the Beginnings, Vol.1


Gerald Massey - 1987
    His assertions, radical at the time-indeed, almost a century before the discovery of three-million-year-old human remains in Africa-resonate loudly today, when molecular biology is making corresponding discoveries alongside the still-raging creation-versus-evolution controversy. In Volume I, Massey lays the foundation of the Egypt-centric position through a scholarly comparative analysis of language, names, and mythology-delving not only into our most basic actions of naming and communicating, but also man's beloved, universal myths of death, awakenings, and love. British author GERALD MASSEY (1828-1907) published works of poetry, spiritualism, Shakespearean criticism, and theology, but his best-known works are in the realm of Egyptology, including The Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World.

Serengeti: Natural Order on the African Plain


Mitsuaki Iwago - 1987
    Sure to win a new round of fans, this classic, best-selling (over 90,000 copies sold!) volume of wildlife photography is now available in a handsomely jacketed new hardcover edition.

Almost Human: A Journey into the World of Baboons


Shirley C. Strum - 1987
    Like our own ancestors, baboons had adapted to life on the African savannah, and Strum hoped that by observing baboon behavior, she could learn something about how early humans might have lived. Soon the baboons had won her heart as well as her mind, and Strum has been working with them ever since.Vividly written and filled with fascinating insights, Almost Human chronicles the first fifteen years of Strum's fieldwork with the Pumphouse Gang. From the first paragraph, the reader is drawn along with Strum into the world of the baboons, learning about the tragedies and triumphs of their daily lives—and the lives of the scientists studying them. This edition includes a new introduction and epilogue that place Strum's research in the context of the current global conservation crisis and tell us what has happened to the Pumphouse Gang since the book was first published.

Visions of a Nomad


Wilfred Thesiger - 1987
    He is also the author of "Arabian Sands", "The Marsh Arabs" and "The Life of My Choice". His achievement as a travel photographer is equally impressive. This book is a collection of those photographs which most satisfy Thesiger. Rarely seen images from his Asian travels, a mixture of familiar and unknown pictures of the Arab world in which he found himself most, and most memorably at home, and images of Africa where he has now lived for almost 25 years.

Moses and the School Farm


Barbara Kimenye - 1987
    

Yoruba Folktales


Amos Tutuola - 1987
    This book includes seven folktales especially for young adults, but of universal appeal. Beautiful black and white ink drawings illustrate the tales whose cast of characters include humans, a goddess, an elephant woman, a boa constrictor and a shell-man.

Preparing for Power: Oliver Tambo Speaks


Oliver Tambo - 1987
    

This Past Must Address Its Present: The 1986 Nobel Lecture


Wole Soyinka - 1987
    

The Giraffe Who Got in a Knot


John Bush - 1987
    In the heat of the African sun, Cardwell the giraffe sees a camel thorn tree and can't resist a nibble. He tucks in so enthusiastically that he gets his neck tied up in a knot, and the other jungle animals have to rise to the challenge of untying him.

An Essay on African Philosophical Thought


Kwame Gyekye - 1987
    It argues that critical analyses of specific traditional African modes of thought are necessary to develop a distinctively African philosophy.

Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus' Third Way


Walter Wink - 1987
    

Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of Africa and Arabia (The Lost City Series)


David Hatcher Childress - 1987
    Join him as he crosses deserts, mountains, and jungles in search of legendary cities, vast gold treasure, jungle pyramids, ancient seafarers, living dinosaurs, and solutions to the fantastic mysteries of the past.

Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire Into the World Economy, 1770-1873


Abdul Sheriff - 1987
    Yet this economic success increasingly subordinated Zanzibar to Britain, with its anti-slavery crusade and its control over the Indian merchant class. North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP

Indigenous Agricultural Revolution: Ecology And Food Crops In West Africa


Paul Richards - 1987
    

The Hunter Is Death


T.V. Bulpin - 1987
    

Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief On Record: Rhodesia Into Zimbabwe, 1964 To 1981


Ken Flower - 1987
    

Kwame Nkrumah


Yuri Smertin - 1987
    Key passages from Nkrumah's writings and those of contemporaries are drawn on to illuminate Nkrumah's great contributions as well as certain contradictory elements in his outlook. An excellent one-volume source.

Falasha Anthology


Julian Obermann - 1987
    . . . Leslau's book points scholars of Falasha social history toward the analysis of oral literature and documentary materials, notably Ethiopic manuscripts, as a method for reconstructing past political events and the nature of structural transformations of Falasha society."-William A. Shack, Reviews in Anthropology

The African Poor: A History


John Iliffe - 1987
    The first history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa, it begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. It provides a historical context for poverty in Africa--both the permanent poverty of the dispossessed and the temporary poverty of famine victims. Its thesis, modelled on the histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been incapacitated for labor, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. Dr. Iliffe investigates what it is like to be poor, how the poor seek to help themselves, how their families help, and how charitable and governmental institutions provide for them.

The Red Fez: On Art and Possession in Africa


Fritz Kramer - 1987
    In ways which may echo 19th-century European realism, they reveal the power of the detail: a feather, a car, or the eponymous red fez which runs like a leitmotif through spirit possession cults of the early colonial period. “The Red Fez” demonstrates not only the startling likenesses to ourselves and our culture, but also reflections of forms of knowledge which this civilization has submerged.

Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1939


Dane Kennedy - 1987