New Books in African Studies

Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of the Mediterranean" (Little Brown, 2020)

31 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jeremy Black, the prolific professor of history at Exeter University, has published A Brief History of the Mediterranean (Little Brown, 2020), to offe...

Jessica Marie Johnson, "Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

28 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power. It is shaped by the peculiar oppressions faced by African ...

Hideaki Suzuki, "Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean: Suppression and Resistance in the 19th Century" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)

27 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hideaki Suzuki’s book Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean: Suppression and Resistance in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan,...

Oumar Ba, "States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

26 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court (Cambridge University Press, 2020) theorizes the ways in which states that are pre...

Zachary Valentine Wright, "Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the 18th-Century Muslim World" (UNC Press, 2020)

21 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World (The University of North Carolina Press 2020) by Zachary Valent...

Benjamin Talton, "In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics" (Pennsylvania UP, 2019)

19 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press) by Benjamin Talton is a transnational history...

Ravi Palat, "The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650" (Palgrave, 2015)

19 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ravi Palat’s The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650: Princes, Paddy fields, and Bazaars (Palgrave, 2015) counters eurocentric noti...

Erik Gellman, "Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay" (Chicago UP, 2020)

13 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

James West speaks with Erik Gellman, an associate professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about his new book Troub...

Charles Piot, "The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles" (Duke UP, 2019)

10 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the West African nation of Togo, applying for the U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery is a national obsession, with hundreds of thousands of Togolese enter...

Nwando Achebe, "Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa" (Ohio UP, 2020)

10 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this unapologetically African-centered monograph, Nwando Achebe considers the diverse forms and systems of female leadership in both the physical a...

N. Achebe and C. Robertson, "Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective (U Wisconsin Press, 2019)

05 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“The most interesting women in the world!” That’s how Claire Robertson describes African women, and it’s hard to disagree with her after readi...

Mari K. Webel, "The Politics of Disease Control: Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019)

03 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In The Politics of Disease Control. Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890-1920 (Ohio University Press, 2019), Mari K. Webel tells a history of col...

Gaurav Desai, "Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination" (Columbia UP, 2013)

03 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Gaurav Desai’s Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2013), offers an alternative hist...

Laura S. Grillo, "An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa" (Duke UP, 2018)

23 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What if the moral guardians of West African societies are postmenopausal women? This is the argument that Laura S. Grillo makes in her 2018 book, An I...

Edward Alpers, "The Indian Ocean in World History" (Oxford UP, 2014)

22 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Edward Alpers’s The Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford University Press, 2014) is a concise yet an immensely informative introduction to the Indi...

R. S. Dieng and A. O'Reilly, "Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond" (Demeter Press, 2020)

21 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How have the everyday practices of parenting been shaped by patriarchy and coloniality? What are the transformative potentials of feminist parenting? ...

Assan Sarr, "Islam, Power, and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin" (Rochester UP, 2016)

21 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An original, rigorously researched volume that questions long-accepted paradigms concerning land ownership and its use in Africa. Islam, Power, and De...

Will Rollason, "Motorbike People: Power and Politics on Rwandan Streets" (Lexington Books, 2020)

20 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Will Rollason is senior lecturer of anthropology at Brunel University London. He’s written a fascinating book titled Motorbike People: Power and Pol...

Oludamini Ogunnaike, "Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic Madih Poetry and its Precedents" (Islamic Texts Society, 2020)

17 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Around the world Muslims praise the Prophet Muhammad through the recitation of lyrical poetry. In West Africa, Arabic praise poetry has a rich history...

J-B. Tchouta Mougoué, "Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon" (U Michigan Press, 2019)

07 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (University of Michigan Press, 2019) illuminates how issues of ideal womanhood shape...

Kara Moskowitz, "Seeing Like A Citizen" (Ohio UP, 2019)

07 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kara Moskowitz, Assistant Professor of African History as the University of Missouri-St. Louis. has written a terrific book, Seeing Like A Citizen: De...

Alanna O’Malley, "The Diplomacy of Decolonisation: America, Britain, and the United Nations during the Congo Crisis, 1960-1964" (Manchester UP, 2020)

26 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1960, the Republic of the Congo won its independence from Belgium. Only one week later, however, Belgium had already dispatched parat...

Steven J. L. Taylor, "Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators: African Americans in Ghana" (SUNY Press, 2019)

24 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

African Americans have a long history of emigration. In Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators: African Americans in Ghana, Steven J. L. Taylor explores...

Ken O. Opalo, "Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Postcolonial Legacies" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

19 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Postcolonial Legacies (Cambridge University Press, 2019) examines the development of African legislatu...

Lynn M. Thomas, "Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners" (Duke UP, 2020)

15 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

By 2024, global sales of skin lighteners are projected to reach more than $30 billion. Despite the planetary scale of its use, skin lightening remains...

Mauro Nobili, "Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

09 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 19th century, on the floodplain of the Niger river’s inland delta in West Africa (present-day Mali), the Caliphate of Ḥamdallāhi eme...

Neil Roberts on How Ideas Become Books in Africana and AfroAm Studies

09 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Where do good ideas come from? How does an idea go from creation to a research project? How is historical research done? And how does research find it...

Joyce E. Leader, "From Hope to Horror: Diplomacy and the Making of the Rwanda Genocide" (Potomac Books, 2020)

05 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this year the world marked the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. An occasion for mourning and reflection also offered a chance to ref...

Kathryn M. De Luna, "Collecting Food, Collecting People: Subsistence and Society in Central Africa" (Yale UP, 2016)

04 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Collecting Food, Collecting People: Subsistence and Society in Central Africa (Yale University Press, 2016), Kathryn M. De Luna documents the evo...

Frank Wilderson III, "Afropessimism" (Liveright, 2020)

03 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How should we understand the pervasiveness – and virulence – of anti-Black violence in the United State? Why and how is anti-Black racism differen...

Nemata Blyden, "African Americans and Africa: a New History" (Yale UP, 2019)

02 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

“What is Africa to me?”, African-American writer Countee Cullen asked in Color, his 1925 collection of poems. African Americans and Africa: A New ...

Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)

02 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for S...

Monique A. Bedasse, "Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization" (UNC Press, 2017)

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization (UNC Press, 2017), examines Rastafarian repatriation to Tanzania ...

M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020)

25 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrat...

Kwasi Konadu, "In Our Own Way In this Part of the World" (Duke UP, 2019)

07 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book In Our Own Way In this Part of the World: Biography of an African Community, Culture and Nation (Duke University Press, 2019), Kwasi K...

Anne Heffernan, "Limpopo’s Legacy, Student Politics and Democracy in South Africa" (James Currey, 2019)

04 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Anne Heffernan's new book Limpopo’s Legacy, Student Politics and Democracy in South Africa (James Currey, 2019) is a thoroughly researched account o...

Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)

28 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...

Jatin Dua, "Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean" (U California Press, 2019)

01 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2019) is a pirate story of a different kind. Based on year...

Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)

30 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....

Nicholas R. Jones, "Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performance of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain" (Penn State UP, 2019)

20 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas R. Jones’s book, Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performance of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain (Penn State University Press, 2...

Christopher J. Lee, "Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa" (Duke UP, 2014)

19 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Unreasonable Histories: Nativism, Multiracial Lives, and the Genealogical Imagination in British Africa (Duke University Press, 2014), Christopher ...

How the Yoruba Live: Islamic Teachings Shape an Inter-religious Modern World

11 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Over decades, the Yoruba community of southwest Nigeria has thrived as an inter-religious community, balancing Christianity, Islam, and the ways of a ...

David Morton, "Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique" (Ohio UP, 2019)

03 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Who built Africa’s cities? Going beyond the colonial archive and the planner’s gaze, David Morton’s Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of As...

Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)

25 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...

Peter Cole, "Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area" (U Illinois Press, 2018)

19 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is a fascinating, densely researched...

Eddie Michel, "The White House and White Africa" (Routledge, 2018)

19 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence was one of the last crises of formal imperialism. British settlers in present-day Zimbabwe, then ...

Rupert Lewis, "Marcus Garvey" (UP of West Indies, 2018)

13 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rupert Lewis has written a biography of Marcus Garvey published by the University Press of the West Indies in 2018. His book Marcus Garvey documents t...

Julie MacArthur, "Dedan Kimathi on Trial: Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion" (Ohio UP, 2017)

11 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2015, University of Toronto professor Julie MacArthur decided to follow a couple more leads in the search for the long-missing, feared-lost transcr...

Sean Jacobs, "Media in Postapartheid South Africa: Postcolonial Politics in the Age of Globalization" (Indiana UP, 2019)

04 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sean Jacobs, Associate Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City. Jacobs is also the founder and editor of the acclaimed A...

Roberto Strongman, "Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou" (Duke UP, 2019)

04 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou (Duke University Press, 2019), Roberto Strongman reveals ...

K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)

30 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...

Catherine Besteman, "Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine" (Duke UP, 2016)

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Catherine L. Besteman's book Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine (Duke University Press, 2016) is an important contribution to ou...

Jessica Lynne Pearson, "The Colonial Politics of Global Health: France and the United Nations in Postwar Africa" (Harvard UP, 2018)

15 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

International organizations throw up several obstacles—their immense scale, their dry bureaucratic language—to the historian trying to piece toget...

Judi Rever, "In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front" (Random House, 2018)

14 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Judi Rever’s In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (Random House, 2018) is investigative journalism at its finest. Through g...

Gillian Glaes, "African Political Activism in Postcolonial France: State Surveillance and Social Welfare" (Routledge, 2018)

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Gillian Glaes’s African Political Activism in Postcolonial France: State Surveillance and Social Welfare (Routledge, 2018) examines the experiences ...

Stephanie Malia Hom, "Empire's Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy's Crisis of Migration and Detention" (Cornell UP, 2019)

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Italy's current crisis of Mediterranean migration and detention has its roots in early twentieth century imperial ambitions. Stephanie Malia Hom's new...

Alex Lichtenstein, "Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid" (Indiana UP, 2016)

27 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Lichtenstein, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, discusses his new book with co-author Rick Halpern, Margaret Bourke-White and...

Benjamin Breen, "The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade" (U Penn Press, 2019)

26 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Benjamin Breen's The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), we are transported back to a t...

Great Books: Manthia Diawara on Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"

24 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe's 1958 Things Fall Apart transformed the world by vividly imagining the story of an African community in English, ...

K. B. Berzock, "Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa" (Princeton UP, 2019)

23 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The companion publication to the 2019-2020 traveling exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Sahara...

Miriam Driessen, "Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia" (Hong Kong UP, 2019)

13 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

I met Dr Miriam Driessen at Oxford University where she works at the China Centre. We spoke about her wonderful new book Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitt...

Rosalind Fredericks, "Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018)

04 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

They were throwing garbage in the streets. Rosalind Fredericks makes sense of the garbage-scape of Dakar, Senegal in the wake of the 2007 trash “rev...

Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)

03 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, "Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Everyday Life in an In-Between City" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)

02 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato's Migrant Women of Johannesburg: Everyday Life in an In-Between City (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) is a book about home and not-h...

Adeline M. Masquelier, "Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

20 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger (University of Chicago Press 2019) is a study of the kinds of experimentation and creative engagements that young...

David Wheat, "Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640" (UNC Press, 2016)

18 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

David Wheat’s fantastic book Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) argues that the extens...

Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing

03 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...

J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...

Naleli Morojele, "Women Political Leaders in Rwanda and South Africa: Narratives of Triumph and Loss" (Barbara Budrich 2016)

23 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Rwanda and South Africa have some of the highest rates of women’s political representation in the world, with significant growth particularly in the...

Henning Melber, "Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Decolonisation of Africa" (Hurst, 2019)

21 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dag Hammarskjold was such a dynamic secretary-general that for years, the motto about him was simply “Leave it to Dag.” Only the second person to ...

Jennifer L. Derr, "The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2019)

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt's relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of histo...

Jennifer Jensen Wallach, "What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped African American Life" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)

18 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with Jennifer Jensen Wallach about the her book Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food has Shaped Af...

Shayne Legassie, "The Medieval Invention of Travel" (U Chicago Press, 2017)

06 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Shayne Legassie talks about medieval travel, especially long distance travel, and the way it was feared, praised, and sometimes treated with suspicion...

Kevin Dawson, "Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)

26 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Long before the rise of New World slavery, West Africans were adept swimmers, divers, canoe makers, and canoeists. They lived along riverbanks, near l...

Lindsey Green-Simms, "Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)

15 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Cars promise freedom, autonomy, and above all, movement but leave whole cities stuck in traffic, breathing polluted air, exposed of deadly crashes, an...

David Stenner, "Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State" (Stanford UP, 2019)

29 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Morocco’s independence struggle against France and Spain is a complicated one. Because it occurred around the same time of the long-run...

Elizabeth R. Baer, "The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich" (Wayne State UP, 2017)

26 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich (Wayne State University Press, 2017), Elizabeth R. Baer, professo...

Reinhart Kössler, "Namibia and Germany: Negotiating the Past" (U Namibia Press, 2015)

24 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s Namibia was once the German colony of South West Africa, for a 30-year period spanning of 1884 to 1915. From 1904-1908, German colonial troo...

Tiffany Florvil and Vanessa Plumly, "Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions, and Histories" (Peter Lang, 2018)

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Black German Studies is an interdisciplinary field that has experienced significant growth over the past three decades, integrating subjects such as g...

Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019)

01 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the...

Chris S. Duvall, "The African Roots of Marijuana" (Duke UP, 2019)

24 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There's so much discussion in the contemporary United States about marijuana. Debates focus on legalization and medicalization. Usually, Reefer Madnes...

Joseph Hill, "Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal" (U Toronto Press, 2018)

19 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Hill's new book Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal (University of Toronto Press, 2018), is an ethno...

Jeannette Eileen Jones, "Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884-1936" (U Georgia Press, 2011)

17 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When President Trump talked of Africa as a continent of “shithole countries” where people lived in huts, he was drawing on a set of ideas made pop...

Dannel Jones, "An African in Imperial London: The Indomitable Life of A.B.C. Merriman-Labor" (Hurst, 2018)

12 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1919 a man named Ohlohr Maigi died of tuberculosis in London, in deep poverty. He had arrived over a decade before in the imperial capital bearing ...

Jane Hooper, "Feeding Globalization: Madagascar and the Provisioning Trade, 1600-1800" (Ohio UP, 2017)

10 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Madagascar lies so close to the African coast--and so near the predictable wind system of the Indian Ocean--that it’s easy to overlook the island, t...

Stephan Bullard, "A Day-by-Day Chronicle of the 2013-2016 Ebola Outbreak" (Springer, 2018)

07 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Ebola, a virus so deadly that it killed or immobilized its victims within days, have time to become a full-blown epidemic? That’s what happe...

Daniel Hershenzon, "The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean" (U Penn Press, 2018)

05 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For hundreds of years, people living on the coasts of  the Mediterranean Sea enslaved one another. Moslems from North Africa captured Italians, Frenc...

Ryan Hanley, "Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c. 1770 -1830" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

29 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

To our eyes, eighteenth-century Britain can look like a world of opposites. On one hand everything was new: political parties and a ‘prime’ minist...

Toby Green, "A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

17 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

All too often, the history of early modern Africa is told from the perspective of outsiders. In his book A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Ris...

Andrew Wallis, "Stepp’d in Blood:  Akazu and the Architects of the Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsis" (Zero Books, 2019)

16 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Last month Rwanda commemorated the 25th anniversary of the genocide.  Unlike the recent outpouring of books marking hundredth anniversary of the end ...

Kristin D. Phillips, "An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun" (Indiana UP, 2018)

09 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Families in parts of rural Tanzania regularly face periods when they cut back on their meals because their own food stocks are running short and they ...

Caitlín Eilís Barrett, "Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens" (Oxford UP, 2019)

07 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019) is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian...

Jeremy Black, "Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World" (Encounter Books, 2019)

01 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Are you tired of the constant refrain from our campus radicals and their bien-pensant allies in the intelligentsia that the United States and the Unit...

James L. A. Webb, "The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2016)

24 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It is estimated that malaria kills between 650,000 to 1.2 million people every year; experts believe that nearly 90 percent of these deaths occur in A...

Elizabeth Schmidt, "Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror" (Ohio UP, 2018)

15 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Of all the blank spots in the mental maps of many Americans, Africa is one of the largest. Informed by a number of misconceptions and popular myths, k...

Elena Schneider, "The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade and Slavery in the Atlantic World" (UNC Press, 2018)

02 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Histories of the British occupation of Havana in 1762 have focused on imperial rivalries and the actions and decisions of European planters, colonial ...

Kathleen Keller, "Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa" (U Nebraska Press, 2018)

01 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Kathleen Keller’s new book, Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa (University of Nebraska...

Emma Hunter, "Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

22 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Histories of African nationalism and decolonization have often assumed that political ideas such as freedom and democracy were imported into African c...

Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing

19 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...

Chet Van Duzer, "Henricus Martellus’s World Map at Yale (c. 1491): Multispectral Imaging, Sources, and Influence" (Springer, 2019)

01 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chet Van Duzer, an accomplished historian of cartography, trains his sight in this book on one uniquely important map produced in early modern Europe....