East Africa History

The last ruler of the House of Solomon, Haile Selassie, was not only the final Emperor of Ethiopia but also the link to a bygone past. In the days of Haile Selassie, absolute rule was given as an unquestioned divine right. Even though Selassie in many ways was a moderate progressive, he was still an autocratic ruler.

The Nile, like all of Egypt, is both timeless and ever-changing. In this audio, renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey downriver that is both history and travelogue. We begin at the First Nile Cataract, close to the modern city of Aswan. From there, Wilkinson guides us through the illustrious nation birthed by this great river.

The Mahdist War took place at the end of the 19th century between Sudanese rebels and their Egyptian colonizers. A religious leader claiming to be the Islamic Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, raised an army and led a movement to guide not only Sudanese Muslims, but Muslims worldwide. He and the Mahdists envisioned a future in which they would live by the teachings of the Qur’an. However, larger global forces, especially those of global imperialism, would stand in their way. From the Mahdist grassroots movement to independence to reconquest, this is the story of the Mahdist War.

Serially betrayed by the people who promised to care for him, Asad lived his childhood at a sceptical remove from the adult world, his relation to others wary and tactical. By the time he had reached the cusp of adulthood, Asad had honed an array of wily talents. At the age of 17, in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, he made good as a street hustler. He also courted the famously beautiful Foosiya and, to the astonishment of his peers, married her.

The first volume of Adel Ben-Harhara's three-volume memoir delves into the voyage of a boy who was separated from his mother as a toddler and essentially orphaned at the age of five when his father died. With his mother’s inability to provide support, the boy was often left on the streets. As a child, the boy received extensive religious teachings in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. As an adolescent Marxist in Ethiopia, he was imprisoned for taking part in a Communist party youth movement and barely avoided the death squad’s bullets before moving to his ancestors’ land: Yemen.

Birth of a Dream Weaver charts the very beginnings of a writer’s creative output. In this wonderful memoir, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o recounts the four years he spent at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda - threshold years during which he found his voice as a journalist, short story writer, playwright, and novelist just as colonial empires were crumbling and new nations were being born - under the shadow of the rivalries, intrigues, and assassinations of the Cold War.

Halima Bashir was born into the Zaghawa tribe, whose customs have remained unchanged for centuries, in the remote western deserts of Sudan in the region of South Darfur. Halima's father named his daughter after the traditional medicine woman of the village, and she grew up in a happy and close-knit childhood environment. Her father became a wealthy man by his tribe's standards, so he could afford to send Halima to school and university. Halima went on to study medicine, and at 24 she returned to her tribe and began practicing as their first ever qualified doctor.

Renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson leads us through space as much as time: From the river's mystical sources (the Blue Nile which rises in Ethiopia, and the White Nile coursing from majestic Lake Victoria); to Thebes, with its Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and Luxor Temple; the fertile Delta; Giza, home of the Great Pyramid, the sole surviving Wonder of the Ancient World; and finally, to the pulsating capital city of Cairo, where the Arab Spring erupted on the bridges over the Nile.

The Devil Came on Horseback is an intense, vivid autobiographical report from the heart of violent Darfur and a call to action by a former American Marine who became a military observer for the African Union. The first extensive on-the-ground account of the genocide in Sudan, it leads us through the tragic impact of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens and the frustrating complexity of international inaction.

The birth of South Sudan was celebrated the world round. But the celebration would not last: South Sudan's freedom-fighters soon plunged their new nation back into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their American backers. Drawing on extraordinary personal stories of identity, liberation, and survival, this narrative tells an epic story of paradise won and then lost. Zach Vertin's firsthand accounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, bring listeners on an extraordinary journey into the rise and fall of the world's newest state.

The Ottoman world was nothing like an exotic fairy tale featuring tyrant sultans, mean pashas, and ill-fated harem women. The true stories of genuine sultans and princes are a bit more complicated and no less exciting. Incredible facts about this empire still surprise anyone who starts discovering those stories. You’ll find out that, for quite a while, this Islamic state was effectively ruled by women, and that’s just the beginning.

War-game simulation specialists James F. Dunnigan and Austin Bay have revised their highly regarded analyses, bringing up to date not only the many conventional conflicts around the world today but the new battlegrounds that have emerged since the previous edition was published more than a decade ago - the Global War on Terror, counterinsurgency struggles around the world and the latest frontier of modern combat: cyber war.

Abernethy’s 1910 book The Jew a Negro has been analyzed by numerous modern authors studying race relations in earlier times in America. Arthur Talmage Abernethy, PH. D., (1872 –1956) was a professor, Methodist pastor in New York and North Carolina, and a Democratic candidate for congress in North Carolina. He was a gifted speaker and author a score of historical books, as well as being the youngest son of the founder of Rutherford College. He was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and became the poet laureate of North Carolina.

In his 1920 book The Jews of Africa, Mendelssohn attempts to chart the separate and progressive histories of the Jews in the different parts of Africa where they lived since their expulsion from the land by the Romans. He succeeds in compiling a narrative of a large part of the histories of the Jews of Africa during the centuries following the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem.

The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from 42 years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong.

Using the writings of Cosmas and a wealth of other historical and archaeological evidence from the period, eminent historian G. W. Bowersock carefully reconstructs this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The flashpoint of the war, Bowersock tells us, occurred when Yusuf, the Jewish king of Himyar, massacred hundreds of Christians living in Najran. The Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Kaleb, urged on by the Byzantine emperor Justin, led a force of 120,000 men across the Red Sea to defeat Yusuf.

World War I, also known in its time as the "Great War" or the "War to End all Wars," was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months, with little to no respite. Tens of millions of artillery shells and untold hundreds of millions of rifle and machine gun bullets were fired in a conflict that demonstrated man's capacity to kill each other on a heretofore unprecedented scale.

As you study the African myths, legends, and folklore through this guide, you will find that there are so many gods and goddesses, and so many different versions of certain stories, that it will blow your mind. The intricate myths in this book have been lined up and collected to help you understand some of the earliest, most ancient beliefs from those living on the African continent. Some have been influential in our day, and some have been completely forgotten except for vague traditions that have been passed on from one generation to the next.

Two manuscripts in one audiobook: History of Ethiopia: A Captivating Guide to Ethiopian History and The Italian Invasion of Ethiopia: A Captivating Guide to Mussolini's War in Abyssinia. Listen today to learn more about Ethiopia!

El día a día del faraón y sus súbditos a orillas del Nilo. El campesino que cultivaba en las orillas del Nilo recibía la visita regular del recaudador de impuestos, quien necesitaba del escriba para que nada se le escapara y todos pagaran lo que debían, de lo cual rendía cuentas al visir. Éste era el responsable de hacerse cargo de todo en nombre de su señor, el soberano de la Dos Tierras, el faraón, a quien informaba en profundidad y a diario de lo que sucedía en el país....