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Author: Martin Meredith Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0857206672 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
Africa does not give up its secrets easily. Buried there lie answers about the origins of humankind and the dawn of civilisation. Through a century of archaeological investigation, scientists have transformed our understanding of the beginnings of human life, although vital clues still remain hidden. In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about our human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, as well as describing the history of scholarship in this incredibly exciting field. He relates the intense rivalries, personal feuds and fierce controversies that shaped the study and perception of Africa, and recounts the feats of skill and endurance that have illuminated thousands of years of human evolution. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than twenty species of extinct humans and firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind, but also of our own species: homo sapiens, the modern human. Scientific study has revealed how early technology, language ability and artistic endeavour all originated in Africa, and scientists have shown how, in an exodus sixty thousand years ago, small groups of Africans left their birthplace to populate the rest of the world. We all have an African legacy, and in this fascinating and informative book Martin Meredith leads us back to the place where we have rediscovered our common human heritage.
Author: Martin Meredith Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0857206672 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
Africa does not give up its secrets easily. Buried there lie answers about the origins of humankind and the dawn of civilisation. Through a century of archaeological investigation, scientists have transformed our understanding of the beginnings of human life, although vital clues still remain hidden. In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about our human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, as well as describing the history of scholarship in this incredibly exciting field. He relates the intense rivalries, personal feuds and fierce controversies that shaped the study and perception of Africa, and recounts the feats of skill and endurance that have illuminated thousands of years of human evolution. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than twenty species of extinct humans and firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind, but also of our own species: homo sapiens, the modern human. Scientific study has revealed how early technology, language ability and artistic endeavour all originated in Africa, and scientists have shown how, in an exodus sixty thousand years ago, small groups of Africans left their birthplace to populate the rest of the world. We all have an African legacy, and in this fascinating and informative book Martin Meredith leads us back to the place where we have rediscovered our common human heritage.
Author: Howard W. French Publisher: Liveright Publishing ISBN: 1631495836 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 444
Book Description
Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history. Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity? In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa. Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history. While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day. “Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.
Author: Tony Fitzjohn Publisher: Crown ISBN: 0307716058 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
Tony Fitzjohn, part missionary, part madman, has been called “one of the world’s most endangered creatures.” An internationally renowned field expert on African wildlife, he is best known for the eighteen years he spent helping Born Free’s George Adamson return more than forty leopards and lions—including the celebrated Christian—to the wild in central Kenya. Born Wild is the memoir of Fitzjohn’s extraordinary life. It shows how a man driven by an impossibly restless spirit can do almost anything, from being a bouncer in a brothel, to surviving a vicious lion attack, to fighting with the Tanzanian government, to being appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen. A notorious hell-raiser given to scrapes with bandits, evil policemen, and wicked politicians, who has been shot at by poachers and chewed up by lions, Fitzjohn is also a wonderful raconteur. Shenanigans aside, he belongs to that rare species of humans who have sought refuge and meaning in a life truly dedicated to the restoration of the animal kingdom. Many times Tony Fitzjohn has put his life on the line for the cause in which he believes. Born Wild is the story of that passion.
Author: Jan Vansina Publisher: University of Virginia Press ISBN: 9780813934181 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Like stars, societies are born, and this story deals with such a birth. It asks a fundamental and compelling question: How did societies first coalesce from the small foraging communities that had roamed in West Central Africa for many thousands of years? Jan Vansina continues a career-long effort to reconstruct the history of African societies before European contact in How Societies Are Born. In this complement to his previous study Paths in the Rainforests, Vansina employs a provocative combination of archaeology and historical linguistics to turn his scholarly focus to governance, studying the creation of relatively large societies extending beyond the foraging groups that characterized west central Africa from the beginning of human habitation to around 500 BCE, and the institutions that bridged their constituent local communities and made large-scale cooperation possible. The increasing reliance on cereal crops, iron tools, large herds of cattle, and overarching institutions such as corporate matrilineages and dispersed matriclans lead up to the developments treated in the second part of the book. From about 900 BCE until European contact, different societies chose different developmental paths. Interestingly, these proceeded well beyond environmental constraints and were characterized by "major differences in the subjects which enthralled people," whether these were cattle, initiations and social position, or "the splendors of sacralized leaders and the possibilities of participating in them."
Author: Malaika Wa Azania Publisher: Seven Stories Press ISBN: 1609806832 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
Apartheid isn't over—so Malaika Wa Azania boldly argues in Memoirs of a Born Free, her account of growing up black in modern-day South Africa. Malaika was born in late 1991, as the white minority government was on its way out, making her a "Born Free"—the name given to the generation born after the end of apartheid. But Malaika's experience with institutionalized racism offers a view of South Africa that contradicts the implied racial liberation of the so-called Rainbow Nation. Recounting her upbringing in a black township racked by poverty and disease, the death of a beloved uncle at the hands of white police, and her alienation at multiracial schools, she evokes a country still held in thrall by de facto apartheid. She takes us through her anger and disillusionment with the myth of black liberation to the birth and development of her dedication to the black consciousness movement, which continues to be a guiding force in her life. A trenchant, audacious, and ultimately hopeful narrative, Memoirs of a Born Free introduces an important new voice in South African—and, indeed, global—activism.
Author: Judith Küsel Publisher: ISBN: 9780620721141 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
Unlike anything you've read before, enjoy a spellbinding journey as you discover the ancient and hidden beginnings of this planet, including the untold history of the first supercontinent of highly advance beings, Elysium, and the history of the Lion Kingdom.Beautifully illustrated throughout with full colour photos, images, maps and sketches.
Author: Trevor Noah Publisher: One World ISBN: 0399588183 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 279
Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
Author: Tah Asongwed Publisher: African Books Collective ISBN: 9956558427 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 210
Book Description
Born to Rule is the autobiography of an African-president monarch who does not want to pass away without leaving anything in writing to future generations. The book is more than just the autobiography of a president in that it has responded to all the key issues that most people have been asking about the development and underdevelopment of Africa. It is a seminal contribution to the world's collective knowledge of African and world history. At times it is compellingly incisive, satiric, and tongue-in-cheek and, in some places, trenchantly hard-hitting and humorous in its brutal portrayal of the way Mandzah and, by extension, the African continent, is managed and mismanaged.
Author: Katongole, Emmanuel Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 0802874347 Category : Africa Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
Profound reflection on lament and hope arising out of Africa's immense suffering There is no more urgent theological task than to provide an account of hope in Africa, given its endless cycles of violence, war, poverty, and displacement. So claims Emmanuel Katongole, a recognized, innovative theological voice from Africa. In the midst of suffering, Katongole says, hope takes the form of "arguing" and "wrestling" with God. Suchlamentis not merely a cry of pain it is a way of mourning, protesting, and appealing to God. As he unpacks the rich theological and social dimensions of the practice of lament in Africa, Katongole tells the stories of courageous Christian activists working for change in East Africa and invites readers to enter into lament along with them."
Author: Julie Watson Publisher: ISBN: 9780473440015 Category : Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
Nothing could prepare Julie for the experience of living and working in the heart of Africa. This memoir takes you on Julie's journey to Kalene Mission Hospital in Zambia, where she worked as a midwife caring for African women and their babies. It is a story of joy and heartbreak, of courage and perseverance and an extraordinary adventure.
Author: Martin Meredith
Author: Martin Meredith
Author: Howard W. French
Author: Tony Fitzjohn
Author: Jan Vansina
Author: Malaika Wa Azania
Author: Judith Küsel
Author: Trevor Noah
Author: Tah Asongwed
Author: Katongole, Emmanuel
Author: Julie Watson