Africa. Biografia di un continente

John Reader has an agenda. He loves Africa, a continent that has been misunderstood and misused by Westerners for centuries, and he wants you to love it, too. Reader approaches his “biography of a continent” with unbounded ambition and intelligence, gracefully synthesizing academic arguments from d Leggi tutto

From this book, I learned more about pre-Independence Africa than I did before, but I found this book a real plod at times. Much of it reads like a college textbook, particularly in the portions about Africa before the arrival of the first Portuguese explorers -- informative, but didactic and dull. W Leggi tutto

_Africa: A Biography of the Continent_ by John Reader is a very well-named book, a through and engaging look at the epic story of this land, from its geological origins to its most recent political struggles. Though a thick book at 682 pages (plus appendices, endnotes, and bibliography), it is a won Leggi tutto

Before I picked up this book, I had a relatively rich smattering of knowledge of Africa - particularly my trips to Sierra Leone and Tanzania and the reading I'd done associated with them. However, all these readings served to emphasize my lack of a broad, strong foundation of knowledge about African Leggi tutto

One of the more interesting nonfiction books I've ever read — the subtitle of this book is accurate: "A Biography of the Continent." While anthropologists criticize it for leaving out some of the important archaeological finds, and political scientists/historians criticize it for failing to detail e Leggi tutto

This book has held my interest for many weeks, dipping into it a chapter at a time to digest a narrative that covers the span of the African continent - its geography and history - from before the dawn of humanity up to the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa. I was fascinated Leggi tutto