{"title":"History--Africa--West","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"motherland-a-journey-through-500-000-years-of-african-culture-and-identity","title":"Motherland: A Journey Through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity","description":"\u003cb\u003eA groundbreaking exploration of 500,000 years of African history, cultures and identity.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHistorian, archaeologist, and anthropologist Luke Pepera takes us on a personal journey discovering 500,000 years of African history and cultures in order to reclaim and reconnect with this extraordinary heritage. He tackles the question many people of African descent ask - Who are we? Where do we come from? What defines us? And it explores how knowledge of this deeper history might affect current understandings of African identity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Through thematically-linked chapters that explore aspects of African identity from nomadic culture and matriarchal society to beliefs about the afterlife and the tradition of oral storytelling, and interwoven with Luke's own experiences of exploring his Ghanaian family history and his personal questions of identity, this is a comprehensive, relevant and beautifully told new history of Africa, and how it has shaped the world we know today.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 1639368833\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9781639368839\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Pepera, Luke\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Pegasus Books\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Pegasus Books","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Jun 2025)","offer_id":46080806256837,"sku":"9781639368839","price":33.25,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9781639368839.jpg?v=1776040450"},{"product_id":"the-second-emancipation-nkrumah-pan-africanism-and-global-blackness-at-high-tide","title":"The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide","description":"\u003cem\u003eThe Second Emancipation\u003c\/em\u003e, the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a \"modern-day Copernicus.\" The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a \"movement of global Blackness,\" with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is \"typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world.\" Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as \"an epic twentieth-century story,\" \u003cem\u003eThe Second Emancipation\u003c\/em\u003e begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him \"one of the greatest political leaders of our century\"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, \u003cem\u003eThe Second Emancipation\u003c\/em\u003e becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 1324092459\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9781324092452\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: French, Howard W.\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Aug 2025)","offer_id":46080902955205,"sku":"9781324092452","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9781324092452.jpg?v=1776041565"},{"product_id":"writing-timbuktu-the-book-in-west-african-history","title":"Writing Timbuktu: The Book in West African History","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe long overlooked, centuries-long, culture of the book in West\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eAfrica\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePrinted books did not reach West Africa until the early twentieth century. And yet, between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, literate and curious readers throughout the region found books to read--books that were written and copied by hand. In \u003ci\u003eWriting Timbuktu\u003c\/i\u003e, Shamil Jeppie offers a history of the book as a handwritten, handmade object in West Africa. Centering his account in the historic city of Timbuktu, Jeppie explores the culture of the \"manuscript-book\"--unbound pages, often held together by carefully crafted leather covers. He describes the most important and most prolific scholars and their works, the subjects they covered, and ways these books were circulated, collected, and preserved. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe authors of the manuscript-books wrote to demonstrate their knowledge to their peers, expound theological and legal opinions, and engage in scholarly disputation. After beginning his account in Timbuktu, Jeppie traces the literary connections among places as distant as Marrakesh in the north and Sokoto in the south, and smaller settlements in between. He chronicles the work of Ahmad Baba in late sixteenth-century Timbuktu and his students in early seventeenth-century Marrakesh; the emergence of writers in the eighteenth century in what today is Mauritania; the writings of the scholar-rulers of Sokoto, northern Nigeria, in the nineteenth century; and the eventual discovery of the manuscript-book world of West Africa by European travelers and French colonial officials. Finally, Jeppie finds that the handwritten text persisted even after the advent of the printed book, and even among writers whose books were in print, including the famous Malian novelist Amadou Hampâté Bâ.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0691273855\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780691273853\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Jeppie, Shamil\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Princeton University Press\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover (Jan 2026)","offer_id":46081092583621,"sku":"9780691273853","price":27.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780691273853.jpg?v=1776042961"},{"product_id":"a-long-way-gone-memoirs-of-a-boy-soldier","title":"A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e In the #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestseller, \u003ci\u003e A Long Way Gone, \u003c\/i\u003eIshmael Beah 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. \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eMy new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Why did you leave Sierra Leone?\"\u003cbr\u003e\"Because there is a war.\"\u003cbr\u003e\"You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?\"\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes, all the time.\"\u003cbr\u003e\"Cool.\"\u003cbr\u003eI smile a little.\u003cbr\u003e\"You should tell us about it sometime.\"\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes, sometime.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhat 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0374531269\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780374531263\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Beah, Ishmael\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Sarah Crichton Books\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Sarah Crichton Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (Aug 2008)","offer_id":46081177780421,"sku":"9780374531263","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780374531263.jpg?v=1776043751"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.inveni.store\/collections\/history-africa-west.oembed","provider":"Inveni","version":"1.0","type":"link"}