Africa English

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

This small book is mainly a personal record of my adventures and impressions during the first five months of the African War. It may also be found to give a tolerably coherent account of the operations conducted by Sir Redvers Buller for the Relief of Ladysmith. The correspondence of which it is mainly composed appeared in the columns of the Morning Post newspaper, and I propose, if I am not interrupted by the accidents of war, to continue the series of letters.

There Is No Me Without You is the story of Haregewoin Tefarra, a middle-aged Ethiopian woman of modest means whose home has become a refuge for hundreds of children orphaned by AIDS. It is a story as much about the power of the bond between children and parents as about the epidemic that every year leaves millions of children, mostly healthy themselves, without family.

The ancient Egyptians are an enduring source of fascination - mummies and pyramids, curses, and rituals have captured the imagination of generations. We all have a mental picture of ancient Egypt, but is it the right one? How much do we really know about this great civilization? This second edition of Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction explores the history and culture of pharaonic Egypt, including ideas about Egyptian kingship, ancient Egyptian writing systems, and the history of Egyptology.

These are the combat experiences of the first Marine to command a special operations task force, recounted against a backdrop of his journey from raw Second Lieutenant to seasoned Colonel and Task Force Commander; from leading Marines through the streets of Mogadishu, Baghdad, Fallujah and Mosul to directing multi-national special operations forces in a dauntingly complex fight against a formidable foe.

Nobel Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai has campaigned for environmental activism and democracy in Africa for more thanthree decades. In The Challenge for Africa, she delivers an insightful call to action, presenting a realistic look at the diverse problems facing Africans today.

Kek comes from Africa. In America, he sees snow for the first time, and feels its sting. He’s never walked on ice, and he falls. He wonders if the people in this new place will be like the winter - cold and unkind. In Africa, Kek lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived, and now she’s missing. Kek is on his own. Slowly, he makes friends: A girl who is in foster care, an old woman who owns a rundown farm, and a cow whose name means “family” in his native language.

In Faces at the Bottom of the Well, civil rights activist and legal scholar Derrick Bell uses allegory and historical example to argue that racism is an integral and permanent part of American society. African American struggles for equality are doomed to fail so long as the majority of Whites do not see their own wellbeing threatened by the status quo. Bell calls on African Americans to face up to this unhappy truth and abandon a misplaced faith in inevitable progress.

After Tripoli declared war on the United States in 1801, Barbary pirates captured 300 U.S. sailors and marines. President Jefferson sent navy squadrons to the Mediterranean, but he also authorized a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. He chose an unlikely diplomat, William Eaton, to lead the mission, but before Eaton departed, Jefferson grew wary of the affair and withdrew his support.

Ninety-nine elite American soldiers are trapped in the middle of a hostile city. As night falls, they are surrounded by thousands of enemy gunmen. Black Hawk Down drops you into a crowded marketplace in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia with the U.S. Special Forces - and puts you in the middle of the most intense firefight American soldiers have fought since the Vietnam War.

Business. Violence. Concerns about profits. Questions of conscience. This is the untold story of the dealings between a US tire giant and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the man who would become the first head of state convicted of crimes against humanity since the Nazi era.

The Ancient Egyptians are famous for their pyramids and mummies, but how do these ancient items impact your life today? From hieroglyphs evolving into emojis and kohl around the eyes evolving into eyeliner and mascara, the inventions and discoveries of Ancient Egypt offer us endless reasons to appreciate history.

Born in what’s now called Zimbabwe, journalist Peter Godwin returns to his homeland in 2008 after three decades of Robert Mugabe’s brutal economic and human destruction. Hoping to “dance on Mugabe’s political grave” in the wake of the tyrant’s defeat at the polls, Godwin instead risks his life to secretly chronicle Mugabe’s ruthless backlash of torture and terror locals call “The Fear.”

In a sweeping account, Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped the experiences of the peoples living in the watershed of the Atlantic Ocean between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Revolution.

An alphabetical exploration of the people, geography, animals, plants, history, and culture of Kenya.

Four thousand miles, two companions, and several other means of local conveyance later, he emerged on the Mediterranean. The story Morrison tells of this spectacular - and spectacularly harrowing - journey is a mash-up of narrative travel writing, investigative reportage, and current history, resulting in a thoughtful, funny, and frightful trip across a region whose people are trying to claw their way from war and poverty to something better.

Ten million people had been murdered. For 15 years, atrocities had been perpetrated by King Leopold II of Belgium and his Force Publique in the Congo Free State. By 1909, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could stand it no longer and felt the need to speak out and inform the general public of exactly what was going on. This new edition of his passionate plea for action includes contemporary newspaper reports and an introduction by Tim Dalgleish. His book is a classic in the annals of genocide and remains a shocking portrayal of humanity’s "heart of darkness".

Famed historian, university professor, and author of the groundbreaking "The Case for Colonialism" Bruce Gilley demonstrates that, contrary to modern presuppositions, German colonialism from its early roots to the mid-twentieth century served overall as a global force for good in the world, elevating the lives of its subjects and encouraging scientific development while allowing native cultures to flourish within its governance.

From the author of the New York Times best-selling and award-winning Not on Our Watch, John Prendergast co-writes a compelling book with Fidel Bafilemba—with stunning photographs by Ryan Gosling—revealing the way in which the people and resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been used throughout the last five centuries to build, develop, advance, and safeguard the United States and Europe. The book highlights the devastating price Congo has paid for that support.

For the first time, learn what really happened inside the walls of Hotel des Mille Collines. In Inside the Hotel Rwanda, survivor Edouard Kayihura tells his own personal story of what life was really like during those harrowing days within the walls of that infamous hotel and offers the testimonies of others who survived there, from Hutu and Tutsi to UN peacekeepers. Kayihura writes of a divided society and his journey to the place he believed would be safe from slaughter.