White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent
from 1876 to 1912

After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, he describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. "The Slave Trade" is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas''s achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time but to answer as well such controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated. Thomas also movingly describes such accounts as are available from the slaves themselves.

In 1975, Angola was tumbling into pandemonium; everyone who could was packing crates, desperate to abandon the beleaguered colony. With his trademark bravura, Ryszard Kapuscinski went the other way, begging his was from Lisbon and comfort to Luanda-once famed as Africa''s Rio de Janeiro-and chaos.

Angola, a slave colony later given over to mining and plantations, was a promised land for generations of poor Portuguese. It had belonged to Portugal since before there were English-speakers in North America. After the collapse of the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, Angola was brusquely cut loose, spurring the catastrophe of a still-ongoing civil war. Kapuscinski plunged right into the middle of the drama, driving past thousands of haphazardly placed check-points, where using the wrong shibboleth was a matter of life and death; recording his imporessions of the young soldiers-from Cuba, Angola, South Africa, Portugal-fighting a nebulous war with global repercussions; and examining the peculiar brutality of a country surprised and divided by its newfound freedom.

Translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand.

The Companion Volume to the PBS Television Series

Wonders of the African World is an exuberant, visually stunning journey across Africa and through the history of its glorious but forgotten civilizations.

Traveling by camel, by dhow, by Land Cruiser, and on foot, the renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., takes us to twelve countries in search of Africa''s magnificent past, the now neglected civilizations that in their day were as grand and sophisticated as any on the face of the earth. From Nubia''s ancient empire, which for a time ruled Egypt and centuries before had established the earliest known African city, to the fabled town of Timbuktu, where during the medieval period there thrived a center of scholars that rivaled any in Europe and where books were as prized as gold, to Ethiopia''s Christian kingdom, where the Lost Ark of the Covenant is said to reside under perpetual vigil, Gates reveals an Africa little known to Westerners. And as he shows us the achievements that exploiters of the continent have ignored or denied for centuries, he introduces us as well to the fascinating variety of modern-day Africans, many of whom are descended from the great peoples who built Africa''s most formidable cultures, including the Asante, the Swahili, the Tuareg, and the Shona.

As Gates''s compelling narrative shows, the continent''s past continues to be felt in the lives of many Africans today. And in America for the descendants of those brought here as slaves, that past has been a controversial inheritance, passionately embraced by some, fiercely rejected by others. For this reason, Gates''s deeply personal account of discovery is charged throughout by a question posed by Countee Cullen in his 1925 poem "Heritage" and perennially asked by African Americans: What is Africa to me? Finally, though, it is the wisdom of this book that the legacy of Africa, no less than that of Greece or Rome, belongs to all the world''s civilized peoples.

Illustrated with spectacular full-page photographs specially commissioned from the internationally acclaimed Lynn Davis, Wonders of the African World is Africa as we have never known or seen it before.

With 66 photographs by Lynn Davis, 132 illustrations in black-and-white and full color, and 7 full-color maps

Even today there are close to 100 tribal kings in Africa, vestiges of a former age—their ancient traditions preserved, their wisdom and power still honored. A portal into these worlds of mysterious rites, ancient customs, and fantastic finery, AFRICAN KINGS takes us into the inner circle of 70 of these tribes in the person of their king. Gorgeous formal portraits of each king, in full regalia, are accompanied by brief biographies and historical notes on the tribe and the rituals and history associated with each ruler. AFRICAN KINGS introduces us to a way of life rarely glimpsed, with anthropological roots as deep as any on the earth, as they make the transition into a new millennium. Includes a historical introduction that provides an overview of the king''s role in African tribes.

Jones describes the Islamic cultures of North Africa, the city-states & kingdoms of East Africa, the rich traditions of West Africa, & the roots of apartheid in South Africa.

While Egypt is one of the most-photographed countries of the world, and many of its monuments are familiar sights, these photographs are evocative of life in the country before the rush of modernization swept away many traditions. Ancient temples and ruins long-since demolished for their stones, or lost under the waters of Lake Nasser, were saved for posterity in these pioneering photographs. Historical events such as the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the aftermath of the British bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 are included, as well as orientalist portraits of dancing girls and musicians.

The domes and minarets of the Cairo skyline present the image of a city not far from its Mamluke and Ottoman past. Even the pyramids are seen afresh when the figures before them are Arabs in traditional robes or European tourists in nineteenth-century dress. The daily life of Egypt is captured in pictures of officials, water-sellers, shopkeepers, town and country scenes, courtyard interiors and mosques.

"Robertson''s book represents a powerful contribution to African social, economic, and women''s history. Highly recommended." -- Choice

"An important resource for anyone interested in the history of women and trade in modern Kenya...." -- International Journal of African Historical Studies

"... a landmark study, meticulously executed and written.... it will have a wide impact on some of the most significant questions facing the disciplines of history, anthropology, political science, and development economics." -- Gracia Clark

Herskovitz Award-winner Claire Robertson employs a variety of approaches to analyze and weave together this wide-ranging study. Her book provides an extensive case study of historical transformations in gender, agriculture, residence, and civil society. Based on archival documents, library sources (fiction and nonfiction, primary and secondary), surveys and oral histories, participant observation, and quantitative and qualitative analysis, Robertson breaks new ground by focusing on traders in one commodity, dried staples, and comparing and contrasting the evolution of women''s trade with men''s trade.