Tropical Gangsters: One Man's Experience with Development and Decadence in Deepest Africa
10 best books like Tropical Gangsters: One Man's Experience with Development and Decadence in Deepest Africa (Robert Klitgaard): Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman, Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Travels in West Africa, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River, Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe, Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat, and Camel, The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working, The Prophet of Zongo Street: Stories
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa
| Author | Jason Stearns |
| ISBN | 1586489291 |
At the heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and unstaunchable war in which millions have died. And yet, despite its epic proportions, it has received little sustained media attention. In this deeply...
Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman
| Author | Mpho M'Atsepo Nthunya |
A compelling and unique autobiography by an African woman with little formal education, less privilege, and almost no experience of books or writing. Mpho's voice is a voice almost never heard in literature or history, a voice from within the struggle of "ordinary" African women to negotiate a world...
Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
| Author | Gérard Prunier |
| ISBN | 0195374207 |
The Rwandan genocide sparked a horrific bloodbath that swept across sub-Saharan Africa, ultimately leading to the deaths of some four million people. In this extraordinary history of the recent wars in Central Africa, Gerard Prunier offers a gripping account of how one grisly episode laid the groundwork...
A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa
| Author | Howard W. French |
| ISBN | 1400030277 |
In A Continent for the Taking Howard W. French, a veteran correspondent for The New York Times, gives a compelling firsthand account of some of Africa’s most devastating recent history–from the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, to Charles Taylor’s arrival in Monrovia, to the genocide in Rwanda and the...
| Author | Mary Henrietta Kingsley |
| ISBN | 0792266382 |
In 1893, defying every convention of Victorian womanhood, Mary Kingsley set off alone for West Africa to collect botanical specimens. Unaccompanied except for native guides, she plunged boldly into forbidding jungles, often the first European--and almost always the first white woman--ever to...
| Author | Dan Morrison |
| ISBN | 0670021989 |
A spectacular modern-day adventure along the Nile River from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea
With news of tenuous peace in Sudan, foreign correspondent Dan Morrison bought a plank-board boat, summoned a childhood friend who'd never been off American soil and set out from Uganda,...
Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
| Author | Andrew Meldrum |
| ISBN | 0802142516 |
Where We Have Hope is the gripping memoir of a young American journalist. In 1980, Andrew Meldrum arrived in a Zimbabwe flush with new independence, and he fell in love with the country and its optimism. But over the twenty years he lived there, Meldrum watched as President Robert Mugabe consolidated...
Hailed by Bill Bryson and the New York Times Book Review as a rising star among travel writers, Jeffrey Tayler penetrates one of the most isolated, forbidding regions on earth--the Sahel. This lower expanse of the Sahara, which marks the southern limit of Islam’s reach in West and Central Africa,...
| Author | Robert Calderisi |
| ISBN | 0300120176 |
After years of frustration at the stifling atmosphere of political correctness surrounding discussions of Africa, long time World Bank official Robert Calderisi speaks out. He boldly reveals how most of Africa's misfortunes are self-imposed, and why the world must now deal differently with the...
The Prophet of Zongo Street: Stories
| Author | Mohammed Naseehu Ali |
| ISBN | 0060887508 |
A dazzling collection of stories, The Prophet of Zongo Street takes readers to a world that seamlessly blends African folklore and myths with modernity. Set primarily on Zongo Street, a fictitious community in West Africa, the stories -- which are reminiscent of the works of Ben Okri and Amos Tutuola...
| Author | Manu Herbstein |
| ISBN | 1585869325 |
This is the kind of book I wish they had six stars for. I picked this up in a book store on the way to visit Mandela's prison on Robben Island. My version, published by Picador Africa, would have never found its way to my hands if I hadn't been there. And I sincerely believe my life would have been a tad less rich...
| Author | Peter Eichstaedt |
| ISBN | 1556527993 |
“Richard Opio has neither the look of a cold-blooded killer nor the heart of one. Yet as his mother and father lay on the ground with their hands tied, Richard used the blunt end of an ax to crush their skulls. He was ordered to do this by a unit commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group that...
| Author | Dayo Forster |
| ISBN | 0743295714 |
Ayodele has just turned eighteen and has decided, having now reached womanhood, that the time is right to lose her virginity. She's drawn up a shortlist: Reuben, the fail safe; a long-admired school friend; abd Frederick Adams, the 42-year-old, soon-to-be-pot-bellied father of her best friend....
The Shadow of Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa
| Author | Rick Ridgeway |
| ISBN | 0805053905 |
In one of the most acclaimed travel and adventure books of the past year, Rick Ridgeway chronicles his trek from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean, through Kenya's famed Tsavo Park. His tale is, according to The Boston Globe, "a gripping account of how it feels to be charged by an incensed...
Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
| Author | Anne Farrow |
| ISBN | 0345467833 |
Slavery in the South has been documented in volumes ranging from exhaustive histories to bestselling novels. But the North’s profit from–indeed, dependence on–slavery has mostly been a shameful and well-kept secret . . . until now.
In this startling and superbly researched new book,...
| Author | Samantha Weinberg |
| ISBN | 0060932856 |
Just before Christmas in 1938, the young woman curator of a small South African museum spotted a strange-looking fish on a trawler's deck. It was five feet long, with steel-blue scales, luminescent eyes and remarkable limb-like fins, unlike those of any fish she had ever seen. Determined to preserve...
The Ringtone and the Drum: Travels in the World's Poorest Countries
| Author | Mark Weston |
| ISBN | 1780995865 |
Laced with danger, packed with novel insights and told with a humane voice, The Ringtone and the Drum relates the fascinating tale of Mark Weston’s travels in West Africa. His journey through Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso touches a dizzying array of subjects, including the consequences...
I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
| Author | Michela Wrong |
| ISBN | 0060780932 |
Scarred by decades of conflict and occupation, the craggy African nation of Eritrea has weathered the world's longest-running guerrilla war. The dogged determination that secured victory against Ethiopia, its giant neighbor, is woven into the national psyche, the product of cynical foreign interventions....
The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa
| Author | Adam Roberts |
| ISBN | 1586483714 |
Equatorial Guinea is a tiny country roughly the size of the state of Maryland. Humid, jungle covered, and rife with unpleasant diseases, natives call it Devil Island. Its president in 2004, Obiang Nguema, had been accused of cannibalism, belief in witchcraft, mass murder, billiondollar corruption,...
The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa
| Author | Deborah Brautigam |
| ISBN | 0199550220 |
Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. Media reports about huge aid packages, support for pariah regimes, regiments of Chinese...
Surviving on her own in the desert, 12-year-old Jahohora searches for her family while hiding from the German soldiers. It's 1904, and Germany has claimed all of South West Africa. Since the Herero would rather fight than surrender their ancestral homes, Gen. von Trotha has declared that they all should...
The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future. Robert Guest
| Author | Robert Guest |
| ISBN | 0330419722 |
Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades. Why? The Shackled Continent, Robert Guest's fascinating first book, seeks to diagnose the sickness that continues to hobble Africa's development. Using reportage, first hand experience and economic insight, Robert...
The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa
| Author | Bill Berkeley |
| ISBN | 0465006426 |
Since 1983 journalist Bill Berkeley has traveled through Africa's most troubled lands-Rwanda, Liberia, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, and Zaire-seeking out the tyrants and military leaders who orchestrate seemingly intractable wars. Shattering the myth that ancient tribal hatred lies at the...
House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe
| Author | Christina Lamb |
| ISBN | 1556527357 |
Blue mountains, golden fields, gin and tonics on the terrace--once it had seemed the most idyllic place on earth. But by August 2002, Marondera, in eastern Zimbabwe, had been turned into a bloody battleground, the center of a violent campaign. One bright morning, Nigel Hough, one of the few remaining...
