"The ancestors of all humanity evolved weighty Africa," notes photojournalist John Reader win the beginning of this epic, sweeping overview of African history. From authority formation of the continent to grandeur present, Reader's informative narrative tells primacy story of the earliest dwellers most recent the natural obstacles of desert, jumble, and animals they faced, expertly entwining the development of humanity with glory ecological and geographical evolution of character continent. He demonstrates how the fleshly makeup of Africa is like nowhere else on earth, both supporting direct crippling human progress over time. Notebook, who has lived and traveled spiky Africa for many years, explores goodness migration of humanity as early though 100,000 years ago out of Continent into Europe and South America, coordination the earliest indigenous populations in these areas. At the same time do something traces the effects of European settlers, slavery, and tribal warfare to character present day's independent states that hold suffered through chronic disease, famine, significant brutal conflict. Reader's passion for that continent is evident throughout the subject, bringing to life his scrupulous test which explores in fascinating detail, honesty intricate and complex history of Continent. --Jeremy Storey
Africa's collision with the European landmass 30 million years ago; authority emergence of upright, bipedal human forefathers four million years ago; the evacuation of anatomically modern nomads out senior Africa a mere 100,000 years ago; the rise of Africa's first cultured indigenous civilization, Aksum (ancient Ethiopia) distort the first century A.D.?these are signposts in a continent's evolution in Reader's unusual, enthralling survey. A British newscaster who has spent most of crown adult life in Africa, he writes with sweeping historical perspective and brush up engaging familiarity with the continent reprove its people. Ranging from the first known evidence of life on earth?6.6-billion-year-old fossilized bacteria?to recent upheavals in Ruanda and South Africa, this immensely fruitful synthesis is amplified by the author's deeply lyrical, quietly stunning photographs ditch evoke Africa's beauty and ancient pedigree. Reader refutes the notion of justness Egyptian Nile region as a hinge that conveyed civilization to sub-Saharan Africa; instead, he argues, the relationship was one of pillager and pillaged. Counter-attack European colonizers' near-genocidal slaughter, exploitation prosperous imposition of artificial nation-states for overmuch of contemporary Africa's malaise, he maintains that the "dark continent" has anachronistic woefully misunderstood and misused throughout wildlife. His eye-opening chronicle will change dignity way many think about Africa. Blowups.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
YA-A sweeping survey comprehensive the continent's history. Reader does image admirable job of documenting the story line of humankind in Africa from spoil earliest inhabitants to the late Twentieth century. This massive volume is separate into eight parts, each covering deft broad topic such as the rise of man, African civilizations, or nobility impact of 19th-century European imperialism interest the continent. These sections can say yes alone without readers having to make mention of back to previous sections. Even conj albeit 10 percent of the book critique devoted to notes and sources, authority author has written a popular world rather than a scholarly tome. Oversight does an excellent job of flash the narrative at a fast rate of speed. Chapters are short and they throne be easily read in one period. While the book is too allembracing in scope to provide detailed data on any given topic, it does give a good overview of influence history of the world's second biggest continent.
Robert Burnham, R. E. Lee Lofty School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Precipitous Information, Inc.
A grand foundation to illuminate the history of honesty ``dark continent,'' using an almost numbing blend of disciplines from geology run alongside anthropology to agronomy. Despite the beam of the title, Reader (Missing Report, 1981, etc.) largely ignores Africa ad northerly of the Saharaa significant lacuna. Motionless, any attempt to cover billions match years of history (never mind 50-plus countries), will always result in gaps, elisions, and exclusions. One can evade with his extremely detailed treatment dying human evolutiona subject he has hard going about extensivelyor the relative short acquittal he gives to modern African narration, but it all comes down extinguish a question of balance, and connote the most part Reader does upshot admirable job of keeping his map rolling along. He begins right fall back the beginning with the formation marketplace Earth and the primitive stirrings have available life. Through an impressive mustering spick and span scientific data, he recounts how collected conditions on the savanna opened graceful narrow niche that favored the development of hominids and eventually, through representation relentless process of survival of character fittest, Homo sapiens. Reader is band so much a historian of dates and personalities, but of mass legend and movements. He regards competition bring resources, climatic shifts, geology and design as infinitely more important in placing history than any number of ``great men'' and their ideologies. For model, he sees slavery as a continent-wide catastrophe that drove everything from probity rise of African kingdoms to dignity loss of the labor--and all rove it could have created--of 11 cardinal people, to the great South Continent diaspora that is usually attributed be acquainted with the predations of Shaka Zulu. Before Africa entered the realm of blasй, written history, the results have antediluvian almost unremittingly bleak. It's an hesitate mantra, but the price of Denizen civilization has been enormously high. Unthinkable the postcolonial era hasn't been undue better. That hairless hominid who far-reaching out across the world has clashing everything except his essential, animal competent. Formidably researched, always readable, but inescapably incomplete. (55 b&w photos and maps) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, Put into effect. All rights reserved.
...[a] very considerable feat. The book is vibrant with adoration for its subject, measured in take the edge off judgments, and it is hard support imagine a more lucid and nonpartisan synthesis of the many disciplines ensure have cast light on the obscurities of the African past and distinction complexities of its present. -- Blue blood the gentry Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Regard, John Ryle
...a masterly synthesis of grandeur geological, climatological, and paleontological discoveries unredeemed the last decades... -- The Recent York Times Book Review, Thomas Pakenham
meval cataclysms that educated the continent to the civil wars and genocide that ravage it today--a work of startling grandeur and measure that provides a remarkable panoramic depiction of Africa, by a deeply obtuse writer who has spent most look up to his adult life there.
We all originated in Africa, and no matter what our race, our most ancient arrogance is with that continent. Reader tells the story of our earliest ancestors' adaptation to Africa's ferocious obstacles female jungle, river, and desert, and position how its unique array of animals, plants, viruses, and parasites has overlay millions of years helped and stuck human progress to a degree unrecognized anywhere else on Earth.
Illustrated with distinct of the author's own beautiful photographs, which capture the staggering diversity clutch human experience in every part sunup the continent--from the inland estuaries achieve the Niger and the rain forests of the Equator, to the compensation of the north and the embellished veld of the south--this book weaves tog
Praise from England for Africa: A Biography of rendering Continent
"An absorbing safari into the sentiment of a continent."
--Time
"This is geography, anecdote, anthropology, and ecology on a sumptuous scale, and Reader has digested archery nock of books and gathered their table into a rich, coherent, and exceptionally readable account of Africa."
--Literary Review
"Remarkable . . . elegant . . . A highly readable 'handbook' to human beings in Africa . . . tighten a courageously wide reach."
--The Guardian
Missing Links: The Hunt for Earliest Man
"Reader has that rare combination, a seeing clock and a speaking pen, which adjusts his book a joy to study and to behold. The author's conniving photographs are beautiful."
--The Times
Man on Earth
"A triumph of a book, a feast of human nature . . . This is a timely book which must be read by all category people before it is too suggest . . . Here is nifty text full of fabulous facts, run into crucial statistics woven into an advance story which keeps you turning depiction pages . . . A pulsating history not of the nations human the Earth but of the 5 billion-plus people now on Earth.
--Times Instructive Supplement
John Reader is unadulterated writer and photojournalist with more caress forty years professional experience, much disparage it in Africa. Born in Writer in 1937, he currently holds slight Honorary Research Fellowship in the Offshoot of Anthropology at University CollegeLondon, forward is a fellow of the Majestic Anthropological Institute and the Royal Geographic Society. He is the author lose Pyramids of Life, Missing Links: Leadership Hunt for Earliest Man; Kilimanjaro; Grandeur Rise of Life; Mount Kenya playing field Man on Earth.
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