africa history

Hardcover. NY, Praeger Publishers, 1st US, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 331 pages. This is an eyewitness account of the The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. In 1899 Reitz then 17 years old, enlisted in the Boer army to fight the British. After the Boer loss of Pretoria General Jan Smuts, who wrote the forward, decided to conduct guerrilla operations. The book is about Reitz's experiences in the guerrilla war. After the Boers lost the war, Reitz fought with the British in a South African unit in WWI. He later studied law and became a politician and ultimately the South African Deputy Prime Minister. Originally published in Britain in 1929. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Hoover Institution Press, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth with gilt lettering. 196 pages. illustrated with several maps. A study of the conflict between Morocco and Algeria over tribal areas in the Sahara. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Munich, Prestel, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, color and b&w photos. In this stunning photographic series, Pieter Henket presents images of the children of Odzala-Kokoua telling the oral history of the Congo in enchanting and creative ways. Shot over the course of a month, Henket documented the children of this remote region as they designed, planned, created costumes for, and acted out a series of myths - about their tribes, their landscape, and the animals and plants that they live among. Text in English and French. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 407 pages. Color and b&w illustrations. Details the history of cotton and how it has impacted the textile and garment trade. Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colorful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalized economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialization of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe. Clean copy.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 284 pages. Samuel Decalo presents detailed evidence from Dahomey, Togo, Congo/Brazzaville, and Uganda that African military coups are engineered by coteries of cliques composed of ambitious officers seeking self-advancement. He successfully refutes prevailing theories that military rule has fostered socioeconomic or political development or stability. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, black cloth stamped in gilt, 204 pages. Dust jacket with partial fading, edgewear. Clean copy. The author's last work, a study of the Dahomean Kingdom, it's history and the part gold, colonialism and the slave trade played in it's fortunes. Scarce title.

Softcover. Urbana IL, University of Illinois Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 295 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY BECK on the title page. A daughter of freed African American slaves, Daisy Turner became a living repository of history. The family narrative entrusted to her--"a well-polished artifact, an heirloom that had been carefully preserved"--began among the Yoruba in West Africa and continued with her own century and more of life. In 1983, folklorist Jane Beck began a series of interviews with Turner, then one hundred years old and still relating four generations of oral history. Beck uses Turner's storytelling to build the Turner family saga, using at its foundation the oft-repeated touchstone stories at the heart of their experiences: the abduction into slavery of Turner's African ancestors; Daisy's father Alec Turner learning to read; his return as a soldier to his former plantation to kill his former overseer; and Daisy's childhood stand against racism. Other stories re-create enslavement and her father's life in Vermont--in short, the range of life events large and small, transmitted by means so alive as to include voice inflections. Beck, at the same time, weaves in historical research and offers a folklorist's perspective on oral history and the hazards--and uses--of memory. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Row, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 244 pages. The author spent 6 weeks with a courageous and devoted group of black reporters from the Johannesburg Star. This book focuses on the dilemma of these men and women caught between the militant black community, the police who harass them mercilessly, and their white editors who, fearful of the truth and wary of government disapproval, sometimes refuse to print the stories the reporters risked their lives to get. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Fourth Estate, 2nd pr., 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 287 pages. A very clean, tight copy. Here is the true story of the strike that upset the diamond kings, and with it, a history of the world's most acclaimed diamonds, the process by which they are cut, smuggled and stolen, legends and superstitions, and of the shadowy hand of De Beers, for whom diamonds are forever.

Hardcover. New York , Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1890, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 490 pages, green cloth covers with black and gilt decoration. Two gravure frontispieces (of author and Henry Stanley), 21 full-page plates plus text illustrations. Folding map and facsimile of letter in envelope in rear. There is a small chunk of cloth gone from top of spine and some scuffing of cloth on spine and rear cover, otherwise very good.

Hardcover. Jefferson NC, McFarland, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 223 pages, b&w photos. Eugene Jackson became a child star in 1924 playing "Pineapple" in the original "Our Gang" comedy shorts. Join him as he shares his life story -- a story that preserves the history of vaudeville and early Hollywood as well as chronicles the African American experience in the entertainment business.

Softcover. Durham NC, Duke University Press, 2nd pr., 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 342 pages. In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae. Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world's most creative musicians and their work. Clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 161 pages. In this overview of the origins and development of black societies in southern Africa, Martin Hall reconstructs the region's past by throughly examining both the archaeological and the historical records. Beginning with the gradual southward movement of the earliest farmers nearly two thousand years ago, Hall tracks the emergence of precolonial states such as Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe. Farmers, Kings, and Traders concludes with the devastating effects of colonialism. Through a close reading of the accounts of early travelers, colonialists, archaeologists, and historians, Hall places in context the often contradictory histories that have been written of this region. The result is an illuminating look at how ideas about the past have themselves changed over time. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 418 pages, b&w illustrations. "...chronicles the historic transition from apartheid to democracy. This compelling story is told through the lives of four pairs of South Africans from opposite sides of the racial and political divide. Taken together, the profiles provide the most intimate look yet at the social dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa." Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Reaktion Books, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 256 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Meals associated with train travel have been an important aspect of railway history for more than a century - from dinners in dining cars to lunches at station buffets to foods purchased from platform vendors. For many travelers, the experience of eating on a railway journey is often a highlight of the trip, a major part of the 'romance of the rails'. Food on the Move focuses on the culinary history of these famous journeys on five continents, from the earliest days of rail travel to the present. The engaging story and vivid illustrations invite readers to discover an array of railway feasts: haute cuisine in the elegant dining carriages of the Orient Express, American steak-and-eggs on the Santa Fe Super Chief, and home-cooked regional foods along the Trans-Siberian tracks. Readers will be tempted to eat their way across Canada's vast interior and Australia's spectacular and colourful Outback; grab an infamous `British railway sandwich' to munch on the Flying Scotsman; snack on spicy samosas on the Darjeeling Himalayan `Toy Train'; dine at high speed on Japan's `Bullet Train'; and sip South African wines in a Blue Train luxury lounge car featuring windows of glass fused with gold dust. Food on the Move focuses on the culinary history of these famous journeys. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 402 pages, b&w illustrations. An insightful examination of the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and African Independence on jazz in the 1950s and 60s, Freedom Sounds traces the complex relationships among music, politics, aesthetics, and activism through the lens of the hot button racial and economic issues of the time. Ingrid Monson illustrates how the contentious and soul-searching debates in the Civil Rights, African Independence, and Black Power movements shaped aesthetic debates and exerted a moral pressure on musicians to take action. Throughout, her arguments show how jazz musicians' quest for self-determination as artists and human beings also led to fascinating and far reaching musical explorations and a lasting ethos of social critique and transcendence. Clean copy.

hardcover. London, Sinclair-Stevenson , 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 293 pages. Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Gilt titles on spine. Illustrated end papers and paste downs. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Novel based on a true piece of colonial history when 25 European radicals met on Lamu planning to travel inland & set up a Utopia on Mount Kenya.

Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st UK, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with gilt and red title block on spine. 422 pages, b&w map. Light bump to top corner otherwise very good, clean copy. "An analysis That carries an indictment of the whole colonial system."

Hardcover. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University , 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 173 pages. This work is a brief look at worldwide slave revolts in the 17th through 19th centuries, emphasizing their interrelations with European power struggles, which gave rebels hope of finding weak spots in the defenses of the slave powers. The French Revolution also had an influence on slave revolts, but the canny European powers used indigenous peoples to suppress slave revolts (e.g., native Americans) and took advantage of African ethnic divisions as well. American slaves stood little chance of revolt and were under constant surveillance from Southerners, who coward in fear after the successful rebellions in the Caribbean, particularly in Hispaniola, and after Nat Turner and John Brown's efforts. Genovese also brings up religion's double-edged sword: one side used to pacify slaves and the other side to inspire them to break their chains. In short, this scholarly treatise is thought-provoking as well as informative and ends with an inspirational quote from one of Frederick Douglass's lectures. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 324 pages. This provocative study touches all the bases, probing the important cases of U.S. involvement in Africa (the Congo, Angola, South Africa), laying out U.S. interests in Africa's minerals and strategic outposts, and depicting the concern of American blacks with Africa since the nineteenth century. Riding his theses rather hard, Jackson argues strongly against an ineluctable U.S. tendency to react in cold-war terms to African crises. Name on front fly lesf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, BC Ed., 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Copyright page states first printing, but no price on flap, probably a book club edition. Colorfully illustrated boards with black cloth spine, with gilt lettering; white DJ with red and orange illustration and lettering; 255 pages, profusely illustrated. Long before Harlem became one of the trendiest neighborhoods in the red-hot real estate market of Manhattan, it was a metaphor for African American culture at its richest. Allon Schoener's celebrated Harlem on My Mind is the classic record of Harlem life during some of the most exciting and turbulent years of its history, a beautiful and poignant reminder of a powerful moment in African America history. Including the work of some of Harlem's most treasured photographers, among them James Van Der Zee and Gordon Parks, there are photographs of Harlem's literary lights Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Richard Wright; its politicians Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.; and its musicians Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday. The book also includes the photographs of the everyday folk who gave life to this legendary community. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Naperville IL, Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 502 pages, b&w illustrations. For three decades after World War I, Harlem was the site of burgeoning racial and cultural awareness and ambitions among African Americans. In the opening section of this book, Wintz provides the historical context for what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. In separate sections devoted to poetry, music, politics, art, and the phenomenon of the New Negro, contributors profile many of the era's major figures, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, A. Phillip Randolph, and Marcus Garvey. The essays place the Harlem Renaissance in the broader context of an awakening of black culture throughout the U.S. The book contains references to the accompanying CD, which offers 60 minutes of music, poetry, interviews, performances, and speeches, giving voice to the vibrant life of Harlem. Photographs, drawings, book covers, and posters add to the richness of this collection. A fabulous resource on the Harlem Renaissance.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Brassey's , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, b&w illustrations, 293 pages. The 369th became one of the few U.S. units that American commanding general John J. Pershing agreed to let serve under French command. Donning French uniforms and taking up French rifles, the men of the 369th fought valiantly alongside French Moroccans and held one of the widest sectors on the Western Front. The entire regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the French government's highest military honor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, NYU Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 281 pages, b&w illustrations. Before Liz Smith and Perez Hilton became household names in the world of celebrity gossip, before Rush Limbaugh became the voice of conservatism, there was Hedda Hopper. In 1938, this 52-year-old struggling actress rose to fame and influence writing an incendiary gossip column, "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood," that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers throughout Hollywood's golden age. Often eviscerating moviemakers and stars, her column earned her a nasty reputation in the film industry while winning a legion of some 32 million fans, whose avid support established her as the voice of small-town America. Yet Hopper sought not only to build her career as a gossip columnist but also to push her agenda of staunch moral and political conservatism, using her column to argue against U.S. entry into World War II, uphold traditional views of sex and marriage, defend racist roles for African Americans, and enthusiastically support the Hollywood blacklist. Clean copy.