Best Guyanan History Books
Here you will get Best Guyanan History Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
Author: by Jeff Guinn
Published at: Simon & Schuster; Illustrated edition (April 10, 2018)
ISBN: 978-1476763835
2018 Edgar Award FinalistBest Fact Crime A thoroughly readable, thoroughly chilling account of a brilliant con man and his all-too vulnerable prey (The Boston Globe)the definitive story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, the largest murder-suicide in American history, by the New York Times bestselling author of Manson.
In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader.
But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness. In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his early days as an idealistic minister to a secret life of extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing, before the fateful decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America.
2. Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture
Author: by Gaiutra Bahadur
Published at: University of Chicago Press; Illustrated edition (August 4, 2014)
ISBN: 978-0226211381
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a “coolie”the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history.
In Coolie Woman, her great-granddaughter Gaiutra Bahadur embarks on a journey into the past to find her. Traversing three continents and trawling through countless colonial archives, Bahadur excavates not only her great-grandmother’s story but also the repressed history of some quarter of a million other coolie women, shining a light on their complex lives.
Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were either runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many of them left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyagestraumatic “middle passages”only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions and sexual exploitation.
Coolie Woman is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diasporafrom India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the nextthat is at once a search for one’s roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity.
3. Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America
Author: by Michael Reid
Published at: Yale University Press; New edition (November 14, 2017)
ISBN: 978-0300224658
A newly updated edition of the best-selling primer on the social, political, and economic challenges facing Central and South America Ten years after its first publication, Michael Reid’s best-selling survey of the state of contemporary Latin America has been wholly updated to reflect the new realities of the Forgotten Continent.
The former Americas editor for the Economist, Reid suggests that much of Central and South America, though less poor, less unequal, and better educated than before, faces harder economic times now that the commodities boom of the 2000s is over.
His revised, in-depth account of the region reveals dynamic societies more concerned about corruption and climate change, the uncertainties of a Donald Trump-led United States, and a political cycle that, in many cases, is turning from left-wing populism to center-right governments.
This essential new edition provides important insights into the sweeping changes that have occurred in Latin America in recent years and indicates priorities for the future.
4. Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast
Author: by Marjoleine Kars
Published at: The New Press; Illustrated edition (August 11, 2020)
ISBN: 978-1620974599
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPRA breathtakingly original work of history that uncovers a massive enslaved persons’ revolt that almost changed the face of the Americas On Sunday, February 27, 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbicein present-day Guyanalaunched a massive rebellion which came amazingly close to succeeding.
Surrounded by jungle and savannah, the revolutionaries (many of them African-born) and Europeans struck and parried for an entire year. In the end, the Dutch prevailed because of one unique advantagetheir ability to get soldiers and supplies from neighboring colonies and from Europe.
Blood on the River is the explosive story of this little-known revolution, one that almost changed the face of the Americas. Drawing on nine hundred interrogation transcripts collected by the Dutch when the Berbice rebellion finally collapsed, and which were subsequently buried in Dutch archives, historian Marjoleine Kars reconstructs an extraordinarily rich day-by-day account of this pivotal event.
5. U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (The New Cold War History)
Author: by Stephen G. Rabe
Published at: University of North Carolina Press; New edition (October 25, 2005)
ISBN: 978-0807856390
In the first published account of the massive U.S. Covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism. When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S.
Officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan’s replacement in 1964.
The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population. Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe’s analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S.Triumph.
6. Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual
Author: by Walter Rodney
Published at: Africa World Pr (August 1, 1990)
ISBN: 978-0865430723
Paperback book concerning Walter Rodney, African Intellectual
7. A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture)
Author: by Prof Walter Rodney
Published at: The Johns Hopkins University Press; First Edition (US) First Printing (September 1, 1981)
ISBN: 978-0801824470
Completed shortly before Walter Rodney’s assassination in June 1980, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 provides an original, well-informed, and perceptive contribution to the historiography of nineteenth-century Guyanese society. This comprehensive examination encompasses the history of African and Asian immigration into Guyana, the interaction of ethnic groups, the impact of British colonialism, economic and political constraints on the working class, and the social life of the masses.
Rodney argues that the social evolution of the Guyanese working people has been guided by specific material constraints and extremely powerful external focuses from Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. He emphasizes the destructive fragmentation of the working class along ethnic, political, and social lines, encouraged by the legacy of slavery, postslavery immigration, legal distinctions between various classes of labor, and the economic bases of the society.
In contrast to the well-defined middle and upper classes, the working people appeared divided, disorganized, and leaderless. Rodney’s account ends in 1905, when the hardships and frustrations of the masses exploded into violence. A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 will stand alone as a landmark study of the profound social upheaval that characterized Guyanese society in the years following emancipation.
8. City of Wooden Houses: Georgetown, Guyana
Author: by Mr Compton Davis
Published at: Merrell Publishers (September 5, 2017)
ISBN: 978-1858946641
Georgetown, capital of Guyana, on the northeast coast of South America, has been described as ‘the Venice of the West Indies’, and its elegant canals and bridges, lush tropical vegetation and handsome buildings make it a place of great beauty.
The city’s architecture is essentially colonial, having been molded by the French, Dutch, British and Spanish during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Built in a classical style reinterpreted by local craftsmen and realized largely in the region’s plentiful wood rather than more durable brick and stone, these buildings are now suffering from neglect and the ravages of the hot, humid climate.
Some are being carefully preserved and maintained, but many more are disintegrating or being demolished to make way for development, much of it in glass and concrete. This book documents those colonial buildings, some of which have disappeared even since they were photographed.
Compton Davis begins by giving a brief history of Georgetown itself, describing the influences that resulted in its charming and characteristic architecture, and explaining the various house types that are to be found in the city. The main part of the book is organized geographically, dividing the city into its various districts and describing the notable houses to be found in each.
9. Stories from Jonestown
Author: by Leigh Fondakowski
Published at: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1st edition (February 1, 2013)
ISBN: 978-0816678082
The saga of Jonestown didn’t end on the day in November 1978 when more than nine hundred Americans died in a mass murder-suicide in the Guyanese jungle. While only a handful of people present at the agricultural project survived that day in Jonestown, more than eighty members of Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, were elsewhere in Guyana on that day, and thousands more members of the movement still lived in California.
Emmy-nominated writer Leigh Fondakowski, who is best known for her work on the play and HBO film The Laramie Project, spent three years traveling the United States to interview these survivors, many of whom have never talked publicly about the tragedy.
Using more than two hundred hours of interview material, Fondakowski creates intimate portraits of these survivors as they tell their unforgettable stories. Collectively this is a record of ordinary people, stigmatized as cultists, who after the Jonestown massacre were left to deal with their grief, reassemble their lives, and try to make sense of how a movement born in a gospel of racial and social justice could have gone so horrifically wrongtaking with it the lives of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters.
10. WE ARE ONE (Volume)
Author: by Leon D Labastide
Published at: Independently published (August 2, 2020)
ISBN: 979-8624654525
WE ARE ONE, captures the essence of Guyana as a tourism booklet. Guyana has become a tourism attraction for millions of individuals, whether you are visiting the beautiful land of Guyana for the first time or simply returning home after a long journey around the globe.
You will feel connected after reading We Are One. What makes Guyana so attractive?Multiple things! It’s rich history, the natural resources, the marketplace, the pristine rainforests, sugarcane plantations, rice fields, bauxite, gold reserves, the new found oil, the new infrastructure, new developments, the beautiful landmarks and most of all, the diversity of its people.
We Are One, creates new conversations and brings back old memories as if it was only yesterday. As you turn each page, the author wants you to enjoy every photograph and every poetic word choice. He wants you to enjoy Guyana through his poetic lens and if by any chance, you have the opportunity to visit the beautiful land of Guyana.
Just remember that We Are ; One people, One nation, One destiny. Here is a quote from the author, I wrote this book because I believe we are the movement of this new millennium. As we March and protest for equality.
11. The Guyana Story: From Earliest Times to Independence
Author: by Odeen Ishmael
Published at: XLIBRIS (February 28, 2013)
ISBN: 978-1479795888
The Guyana Story-From Earliest Times to Independence traces the country’s history from thousands of years ago when the first Amerindian groups began to settle on the Guyana territory. It examines the period of early European exploration leading to Dutch colonization, the forcible introduction of African slaves to work on cotton and sugar plantations, the effects of European wars, and the final ceding of the territory to the British who ruled it as their colony until they finally granted it independence in 1966.
The book also tells of Indian, Chinese, and Portuguese indentured immigration and shows how the cultural interrelationships among the various ethnic groups introduced newer forms of conflict, but also brought about cooperation in the struggles of the workers for better working and living conditions.
The final part describes the roles of the political leaders who arose from among these ethnic groups from the late 1940s and began the political struggle against colonialism and the demand for independence. This struggle led to political turbulence in the 1950s and early 1960s when the country was caught in the crosshairs of the cold war resulting in joint British-American devious actions that undermined a democratically elected pro-socialist government and deliberately delayed independence for the country until a government friendly to their international interests came to power.
12. Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco
Author: by Daniel J. Flynn
Published at: Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 1st edition (October 8, 2018)
ISBN: 978-1610171519
The untold story of the intersecting lives of the Reverend Jim Jones and Harvey Milkmarking the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre and Milk’s assassinationNovember 1978. The Reverend Jim Jones, the darling of the San Francisco political establishment, orchestrates the murders and suicides of 918 people at a remote jungle outpost in South America.
Days later, Harvey Milk, one of America’s first openly gay elected officialsand one of Jim Jones’s most vocal supportersis assassinated in San Francisco’s City Hall. This horrifying sequence of events shocked the world. Almost immediately, the lives and deaths of Jim Jones and Harvey Milk became shrouded in myth.
The distortions and omissions have piled up since. Now, forty years later, this book corrects the record. The product of a decade of research, including extensive archival work and dozens of exclusive interviews, Cult City reveals just how confused our understanding has become.
In life, Jim Jones enjoyed the support of prominent politicians and Hollywood stars even as he preached atheism and communism from the pulpit; in death, he transforms into a fringe figure, a fundamentalist Christian, and a fascist. In life, Harvey Milk outed friends, faked hate crimes, and falsely claimed that the U.S.
13. Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (Early American Studies)
Author: by Randy M. Browne
Published at: University of Pennsylvania Press (April 3, 2020)
ISBN: 978-0812224634
A history of the everyday struggles of slaves in the British colony of BerbiceAtlantic slave societies were notorious deathtraps. In Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, Randy M. Browne looks past the familiar numbers of life and death and into a human drama in which enslaved Africans and their descendants struggled to survive against their enslavers, their environment, and sometimes one another.
Grounded in the nineteenth-century British colony of Berbice, one of the Atlantic world’s best-documented slave societies and the last frontier of slavery in the British Caribbean, Browne argues that the central problem for most enslaved people was not how to resist or escape slavery but simply how to stay alive.
Guided by the voices of hundreds of enslaved people preserved in an extraordinary set of legal records, Browne reveals a world of Caribbean slavery that is both brutal and breathtakingly intimate. Field laborers invoked abolitionist-inspired legal reforms to protest brutal floggings, spiritual healers conducted secretive nighttime rituals, anxious drivers weighed the competing pressures of managers and the condition of their fellow slaves in the fields, and women fought back against abusive masters and husbands.
14. Demerara Sugar
Author: by Pam Walters
Published at: Rock's Mills Press (June 7, 2020)
ISBN: 978-1772441956
An evocative memoir of childhood on a sugar plantation in British Guiana in the 1930s and ’40s … In Demerara Sugar, author Pam Walters provides a child’s-eye view of British Guiana – the British Empire’s only foothold on the South American continent – that is by turns poignant, humorous and insightful.
The colony’s sugar plantations were integral to the economy of the Empire. Expatriate English, Scots and Irish managed a plantation economy only possible with the work of field labour and a colonial society of merchants, teachers and government officialdom.”All are childhood memories and what I gleaned from Kitchen-talk and word-of mouth stories from the people around me at the time,” the author writes of the sources of her narrative.
“[Those people] were the descendants of slaves who had been taken to Enmore from the slave ships and whose families had always lived there.”With an unerring eye for detail, the author depicts her own at times eccentric family and household, against the broader backdrop of growing up on a sugar plantation 1930s and ’40s.
15. A Democracy in Distress: Documenting Guyana's Political Crisis: 2018-2020
Author: by Stephen Kissoon
Published at: Independently published (January 12, 2021)
ISBN: 979-8593748737
A Democracy in Distress is a chronological documentation of the recently concluded political and constitutional crisis in Guyana that consumed the nation. The crisis begun with the successful passing of the Motion of No-Confidence against the incumbent APNU/AFC by the then opposition PPP/C and spiralled into a seemingly endless amount of legal battles and culminated into an egregious attempt to fix an election while the world’s attention was fixed on Guyana after its significant oil discoveries.
This book seeks to document the events in the manner it occurred using credible sources to create a vivid memory of the events that will forever be remembered in Guyana’s history. The objective was to provide apolitical, unbiased documentation of the facts for posterity.
