Best West African History Books
Here you will get Best West African History Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Author: by Ishmael Beah
0374531269
Sarah Crichton Books
English
This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers.
Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer?How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives.
But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence.
By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.”My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
2. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
Author: by Saidiya Hartman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
English
288 pages
In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, she reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African American history.
The slave, Hartman observes, is a strangertorn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider. There are no known survivors of Hartman’s lineage, no relatives in Ghana whom she came hoping to find.
She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way and with figures from the past whose lives were shattered and transformed by the slave trade.
Written in prose that is fresh, insightful, and deeply affecting, Lose Your Mother is a “landmark text” (Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams).
3. Hiding The Hebrews: Did America Kidnap The Lost Tribes of Israel?
Author: by Dante Fortson
English
63 pages
107566568X
Are the tribes of Israel really “lost” or were they hidden as prophesied in Psalms 83? The Bible seems to indicate a multi national conspiracy to hide Israel and wipe out the memory of who they really are. If this is true, then history as we know it has been hijacked, and it is only through searching that we will find the truth.
In this book, you’ll find the answers to the following questions, just to name a few:Why does a 1747 English map place the tribe of Judah on the “slave coast” of Africa? Why do slave ledgers show slaves being registered with Hebrew names fresh off of the ships?
Why did slaves sing songs in Hebrew and call out to Yah for help? Why did Christ mention the slavery of Israel as a sign of the end of the age? Are “the times of the Gentiles” coming to an end?
If you are 100% honest with yourself as you find the answers to these questions, your eyes will be opened. If you’re ready to start this eye opening adventure through scripture then keep reading. ISRAEL IS STILL A NATION TO GOD AND ALWAYS WILL BE!
4. Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History
Author: by Paul Farmer
English
688 pages
0374234329
Paul Farmer brings his considerable intellect, empathy, and expertise to bear in this powerful and deeply researched account of the Ebola outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014. It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book. Bill and Melinda Gates”[The] history is as powerfully conveyed as it is tragic …Illuminating …
Invaluable.” Steven Johnson, The New York Times Book ReviewIn 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert where basic health-care facilities were few and far between.
Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it? Paul Farmer, the internationally renowned doctor and anthropologist, experienced the Ebola outbreak firsthandPartners in Health, the organization he founded, was among the international responders.
In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he offers the first substantive account of this frightening, fast-moving episode and its implications. In vibrant prose, Farmer tells the harrowing stories of Ebola victims while showing why the medical response was slow and insufficient.
5. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts
Author: by Joshua Hammer
1476777411
Simon & Schuster
English
To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven in this fast-paced narrative that ispart intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and part out-and-out thriller (The Washington Post) from the author of The Falcon Thief.
In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds.
His goal: preserve this crucial part of the world’s patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door. Part history, part scholarly adventure story, and part journalist surveyJoshua Hammer writes with verve and expertise (The New York Times Book Review) about how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist from the legendary city of Timbuktu, became one of the world’s greatest smugglers by saving the texts from sure destruction.
6. More Than Slaves: The Truth No Black Person Was Ever Meant To Find Out
Author: by Dante Fortson
English
42 pages
1095208616
Was slavery just a random grabbing of black people from Africa or were certain people targeted for slavery by Europeans? There is a lot that we’re not being told about slavery, and for some strange reason European pastors refuse to address the verses about slavery in scripture.
We often hear that Hebrews migrated into the rest of the world and became all nations, but that’s simply not true. + The Bible says that Hebrews would be taken across the Atlantic Ocean in slave ships. + The Bible says that Hebrews would be enslaved for 400 years, beat, raped, and murdered by Europeans.
+ The Bible says that in the last days the Hebrews would remember who they were in the land of their captivity. + The Bible says that there are people PRETENDING to be Hebrews and it’s blasphemy. + The Bible says that the Gentiles will admit that they’ve inherited lies from their ancestors.
Are you on the side of truth or the side of blasphemy? Read this study and find out the truth that has been hidden from our people since our ancestors first stepped foot in this country. The truth shall set us free.
7. Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle
Author: by Thomas Sankara
Pathfinder Press
English
69 pages
There is no true social revolution without the liberation of women, explains the leader of the 1983-87 revolution in Burkina Faso. Workers and peasants in that West African country established a popular revolutionary government and began to combat the hunger, illiteracy, and economic backwardness imposed by imperialist domination.
Preface, introduction, map, photos, index. Also available in: Spanish, French, Farsi
8
The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey
Author: by Randy J. Sparks
Harvard University Press
English
208 pages
In 1767, two “princes” of a ruling family in the port of Old Calabar, on the slave coast of Africa, were ambushed and captured by English slavers. The princes, Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin Robin John, were themselves slave traders who were betrayed by African competitors-and so began their own extraordinary odyssey of enslavement.
Their story, written in their own hand, survives as a rare firsthand account of the Atlantic slave experience. Randy Sparks made the remarkable discovery of the princes’ correspondence and has managed to reconstruct their adventures from it. They were transported from the coast of Africa to Dominica, where they were sold to a French physician.
By employing their considerable language and interpersonal skills, they cleverly negotiated several escapes that took them from the Caribbean to Virginia, and to England, but always ended in their being enslaved again. Finally, in England, they sued for, and remarkably won, their freedom.
9. A History of the Yoruba People
Author: by Stephen Adebanji Akintoye
Amalion Publishing
English
512 pages
A History of the Yoruba People is a comprehensive exploration of the founding and growth of one of the most influential groups in Africa. With a population of nearly 40 million spread across Western Africa – and diaspora communities in Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America – Yoruba are one of the most researched groups emanating from Africa.
Yet, to date, very few have grappled fully with the historical foundations and development of this group which has contributed to shaping the way African communities are analyzed from prehistoric to modern times. This commendable book deploys four decades of historiography research with current interpretations and analyses to present the most complete and authoritative volume to date.
This exceptionally lucid account gathers and imparts a wealth of research and discourses on Yoruba studies for a wider group of readership than ever before.
10. African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa
Author: by Michael Gomez
Princeton University Press
English
520 pages
A groundbreaking book that puts early and medieval West Africa on the map of global historyPick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa?On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story.
Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces how Islam’s growth in West Africa, along with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire.
A radically new account of the importance of early Africa in global history, African Dominion will be the standard work on the subject for years to come.
11. African Narratives of Orishas, Spirits and Other Deities
Author: by Alex Cuoco
English
722 pages
1977235735
Stories from West Africa and the African Diaspora: a journey into the realm of deities, spirits, mysticism, spiritual roots and ancestral wisdom. Acknowledging that the Yorb are one of the largest and most important groups of people in West Africa, apart from its value as a cultural treasure, African Narratives of Orishas, Spirits and Other Deities will delight the readers with its wealth of information on Yorb Orisha, Vodun, and Nkisi religious beliefs which are told in a spirited form with humor and poetry.
Every page reveals different deeds and aspects of Yorb deities known as r, as well as a number of spirits and other deities. This stunning collection of 352 narratives showcases the diversity of Yorb r culture and evokes divine power. It gives West African deities their much deserved respect and place in world culture.
Alex Cuoco specifically kept the texts in this collection of narratives and supporting topics, in a non-academic format to afford the reader a free flow of thought without interruptions to check notes. He chose to use simple language throughout the book to make the texts understandable and valuable to the general reader, as well as, making it a great contribution to the informed.
12. The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East
Author: by Eugene Rogan
Basic Books
English
512 pages
The thrilling and definitive history of World War I in the Middle East By 1914 the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and they pulled the Middle East along with them into one of the most destructive conflicts in human history.
In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region’s crucial role in the conflict. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Gaza before the tide of battle turned in the Allies’ favor.
The postwar settlement led to the partition of Ottoman lands, laying the groundwork for the ongoing conflicts that continue to plague the modern Arab world. A sweeping narrative of battles and political intrigue from Gallipoli to Arabia, The Fall of the Ottomans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Great War and the making of the modern Middle East.
13. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora
Author: by Stephanie E. Smallwood
0674030680
Harvard University Press
English
This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors.Stephanie E. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market.
Smallwood’s story is animated by deep research and gives us a startlingly graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves. Ultimately, Saltwater Slavery details how African people were transformed into Atlantic commodities in the process.
She begins her narrative on the shores of seventeenth-century Africa, tracing how the trade in human bodies came to define the life of the Gold Coast. Smallwood takes us into the ports and stone fortresses where African captives were held and prepared, and then through the Middle Passage itself.
In extraordinary detail, we witness these men and women cramped in the holds of ships, gasping for air, and trying to make sense of an unfamiliar sea and an unimaginable destination. Arriving in America, we see how these new migrants enter the market for laboring bodies, and struggle to reconstruct their social identities in the New World.
14. The Yoruba: A New History
Author: by Akinwumi Ogundiran
Indiana University Press
English
562 pages
The Yoruba: A New History is the first transdisciplinary study of the two-thousand-year journey of the Yoruba people, from their origins in a small corner of the Niger-Benue Confluence in present-day Nigeria to becoming one of the most populous cultural groups on the African continent.
Weaving together archaeology with linguistics, environmental science with oral traditions, and material culture with mythology, Ogundiran examines the local, regional, and even global dimensions of Yoruba history. The Yoruba: A New History offers an intriguing cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and social history from ca.300 BC to 1840.
It accounts for the events, peoples, and practices, as well as the theories of knowledge, ways of being, and social valuations that shaped the Yoruba experience at different junctures of time. The result is a new framework for understanding the Yoruba past and present.
15. The Science of the Dogon: Decoding the African Mystery Tradition
Author: by Laird Scranton
1594771332
Inner Traditions
English
A look at the close resemblance between the creation and structure of matter in both Dogon mythology and modern science Reveals striking similarities between Dogon symbols and those used in both the Egyptian and Hebrew religions Demonstrates the parallels between Dogon mythical narratives and scientific concepts from atomic theory to quantum theory and string theory The Dogon people of Mali, West Africa, are famous for their unique art and advanced cosmology.
The Dogon’s creation story describes how the one true god, Amma, created all the matter of the universe. Interestingly, the myths that depict his creative efforts bear a striking resemblance to the modern scientific definitions of matter, beginning with the atom and continuing all the way to the vibrating threads of string theory.
Furthermore, many of the Dogon words, symbols, and rituals used to describe the structure of matter are quite similar to those found in the myths of ancient Egypt and in the daily rituals of Judaism. For example, the modern scientific depiction of the informed universe as a black hole is identical to Amma’s Egg of the Dogon and the Egyptian Benben Stone.
16. The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670: A Documentary History
Author: by Malyn Newitt
Cambridge University Press
English
266 pages
The Portuguese in West Africa, 14151670 brings together a collection of documents all in new English translation that illustrate aspects of the encounters between the Portuguese and the peoples of North and West Africa in the period from 1400 to 1650. This period witnessed the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews, the emigration of Portuguese to West Africa and the islands, and the beginnings of the black diaspora associated with the slave trade.
The documents show how the Portuguese tried to understand the societies with which they came into contact and to reconcile their experience with the myths and legends inherited from classical and medieval learning. They also show how Africans reacted to the coming of Europeans, adapting Christian ideas to local beliefs and making use of exotic imports and European technologies.
The documents also describe the evolution of the black Portuguese communities in Guinea and the islands, as well as the slave trade and the way that it was organized, understood, and justified.
