Africa English

This is the harrowing but triumphant story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Liberian women's movement, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first democratically elected female president in African history.

Emmy Award-winning storyteller Bobby Norfolk brings his electrifying energy to world folktales (African, Eastern European, Appalachian, and Irish traditions), to the delight of all ages. From Anansi, the African trickster, to Jack, the bumbling, lucky, persevering Everyman of traditional stories, Norfolk's characters instruct while they entertain.

In 1795 the interior of Africa was still a great unexplored mystery to the Western world. Mungo Park, an experienced explorer, approached the Royal Society, which was raising funds to mount an expedition deep into the interior to find the source of the Niger. They adopted Mungo as their agent, and thus he started off on adventure that would send him into the unknown.

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.

In the Forest of No Joy captures in vivid detail the experiences of the men, women, and children who toiled on the railroad, and forces a reassessment of the moral relationship between modern industrialized empires and what could be called global humanitarian impulses - the desire to improve the lives of people outside of Europe. Drawing on exhaustive research in French and Congolese archives, a chilling documentary record, J.P. Daughton tells the epic story of the Congo-Océan railroad and in doing so reveals the human costs and contradictions of modern empire.

Michaela DePrince was known as girl no. 27 at the orphanage where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a "devil child" for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was at the orphanage that Michaela would find a picture of a beautiful ballerina en pointe that would help change the course of her life. At the age of four, Michaela was adopted by an American family who encouraged her love of dancing and enrolled her in classes.

A Zoo in My Luggage is the colorful, first-hand account of Gerald Durrell's six-month animal-collecting trip in British Cameroon, and his attempts to create his own zoo. Motivated by a passion for wildlife, and a desire to save endangered species from extinction, Durrell assembles a glorious panoply of exotic animals - including a female baboon called Georgina, who later runs amok in a department store; a black-eared squirrel, who tries to bury nuts in his ear; and a gentlemanly chimpanzee named Chumly, who greets him with an outstretched hand.

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. The embrace of Christianity and Islam, even today, is not necessarily to the exclusion of ancestral spirits, nor the essentials of witchcraft and sorcery. The precarious security of albino people in east and central Africa, whose body parts are sought after in traditional “medicine,” is testimony to the fact that these superstitions are alive and well.

Since the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight. They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern.

At age twenty Rowland Bingham committed himself to serving not only in Africa, known as the white man's grave, but in Africa's Sudan interior, where few missionaries had ventured and those who did soon died of disease or retreated in defeat. Experienced missionaries told Rowland that his dream was impossible. But when he found himself the sole surviving member of the fledgling Sudan Interior Mission, he didn't give up—neither did God.

In A Continent for the Taking, Howard W. French, a veteran correspondent for The New York Times, gives a compelling firsthand account of some of Africa's most devastating recent history. While he captures the tragedies that have repeatedly befallen Africa's peoples, French also opens our eyes to the immense possibility that lies in Africa's complexity, diversity, and myriad cultural strengths.

Tola lives in an apartment in the busy city of Lagos, Nigeria, with her sister, Moji, who is very clever; her brother, Dapo, who is very fast; and Grandmommy, who is very bossy. Tola may be small, but she’s strong enough to carry a basket brimming with groceries home from the market, and she’s clever enough to count out Grandmommy’s change. When the faucets in the apartment break, it’s Tola who brings water from the well.

The purpose of this book, and that of others that will follow in the ARS, is to shed light on certain practices, structures, systems, and institutions that we have adopted in Africa and that we continue to follow, even though they may not be tangibly furthering our progress and development as individuals, as communities, as nations, and as a Continent.

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists who demanded the release of 53 terrorists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe in Uganda - ruled by the murderous despot Idi Amin, who had no interest in intervening. Days later, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers assaulted the airport terminal, killed all the terrorists, and rescued all the hostages but three who were killed in the crossfire. The assault force suffered just one fatality.

In April 2014, the world awoke to the shocking news that the terrorist group Boko Haram had kidnapped nearly 300 school-aged girls and taken them deep into the forests of Nigeria. When veteran journalist Mellissa Fung travelled to Nigeria, she discovered that the scope of the kidnappings had been vastly under-reported. Hundreds—possibly thousands—more girls had been taken against their will and forced to become child brides to soldiers and leaders of Boko Haram. Some of the captives escaped and returned to their villages, many with children in tow.

Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to Nigeria - a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn't return for 10 years. Recently, she decided to rediscover and come to terms with the country her father loved.

Michael Palin is off again, this time to the seemingly desolate Sahara Desert. There's no easy way across, as he and his team discover on their most challenging expedition yet.

It was the war that changed everything, and yet it's been mostly forgotten: in 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. It dominated newspaper headlines and newsreels. It inspired mass marches in Harlem, a play on Broadway, and independence movements in Africa. As the British Navy sailed into the Mediterranean for a white-knuckle showdown with Italian ships, riots broke out in major cities all over the United States.

If you are a millennial who is trying to figure out how money works, this audiobook is for you. With simple, relatable and sometimes amusing stories about how to manage money on a day-to-day basis, you will learn how to change your mindset about money, get out of debt and stay debt-free, invest your money and ultimately, live your best life.

Drusilla Dunjee Houston (1876-1941) was a teacher, journalist, and self-taught historian. Inspired by the works of WEB DuBois, Houston undertook a quest to discover African history from an African American perspective. In Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Houston identifies the Kushite civilization of Sudan, with its capital city Meroe, to be the cradle of humanity.