100 Best African History Books of All Time (Updated for 2026)

1

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschil

5.0

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.

Recommended by Steve Crawshaw and Suzannah Lipscomb.

Steve Crawshaw

Large parts of the Belgian establishment loathe this book. It tells, as its sub-title says, ‘a story of greed, terror and heroism’. It lays bare the absolute fiction that King Leopold’s fief in the Congo was based on some philanthropic urge – a line that Leopold managed to peddle with extraordinary success at the time. I don’t know if what Leopold did would be called ‘genocide’ today or not. But millions died under his rule, often in horrific circumstances, invisible to the rest of the world. Modern communications didn’t exist. [source]

Suzannah Lipscomb

This is an incredibly powerful, horrifying, and utterly brilliant study of Belgian colonialism of the Congo and the brutality and genocide that followed in its wake. [source]

2

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah

4.9

Preview Summary

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often ab

Recommended by Bill Gates, Heather Zynczak, Irina Nica, and 3 others.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

As a longtime fan of The Daily Show, I loved reading this memoir about how its host honed his outsider approach to comedy over a lifetime of never quite fitting in. Born to a black South African mother and a white Swiss father in apartheid South Africa, he entered the world as a biracial child in a country where mixed race relationships were forbidden. Much of Noah’s story of growing up in South Africa is tragic. Yet, as anyone who watches his nightly monologues knows, his moving stories will often leave you laughing. [source]

Heather Zynczak

So excited for our latest speaker announcement for #PSLIVE19! Trevor Noah! I am a huge @TheDailyShow fan! And his book -Born a Crime -and life story are amazing. Can't wait! Join us! https://t.co/N6ykJq7TOy https://t.co/r0dIx5RFVI [source]

Irina Nica

I also pay attention to any book recommendations my friends post on Facebook. I started reading Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime after I saw Radu Marcusu, CEO of Upswing, recommending it. He swore by it that is was funny -- and it was! Until the last chapter. I remember listening to the audiobook on a train and crying my eyes out. So yeah. That happened. [source]

3

Long Walk To Freedom

Nelson Mandela

4.8

Preview Summary

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.

Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring p

Recommended by Barack Obama, Richard Branson, Bianca Belair, and 1 others.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list. [source]

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]

Bianca Belair

For #BHM I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 21st Book: Long Walk to Freedom -Nelson Mandela Read about his journey from childhood to the struggles of living under apartheid to becoming a freedom fighter & leader of his country. He is inspirational! https://t.co/bdvZu0kbh0 [source]

4

Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.

Williams Chancellor

4.7

A widely read classic exposition of the history of Africans on the continent—and the people of African descent in the United States and in the diaspora—this well researched analysis details the development of civiliza

Recommended by Greg Carr.

Greg Carr

Happy 126th birthday, Chancellor James Williams: #HBCUMasterTeacher , Historian & Jegna. His book, “Destruction of Black Civilization,” articulates a powerful theory of African history. In 1946, Eleanor Roosevelt used one of Williams's essays to tell White world to check itself. https://t.co/5Mp8HCtZyg [source]

5

Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)

Chinua Achebe

4.7

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and so

Recommended by Barack Obama, Helon Habila, Jacqueline Novogratz, and 2 others.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list. [source]

Helon Habila

It almost feels like a cliché to say that this is one of my favourite books. But there is no way you can escape this book. It is such a part of African literature. It is an inescapable classic. It is a brilliant feat of storytelling, the economy of it, the brevity, the imagery, the ear he has for the traditional language. [source]

Jacqueline Novogratz

The first book I read by an African author. Achebe is unflinching in his portrayal of the challenges of change, the relationships of colonialism, and power/powerlessness. [source]

6

The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

Cheikh Anta Diop

4.6

Now in its 30th printing, this classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.

N.B
(translation of sections of Antériorité des civilisations négres and Nations nègres et culture)

7

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Philip Gourevitch

4.6

In April of 1994, the government of Rwanda called on everyone in the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minority. Over the next three months, 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the killings in Rwanda, a vivid history of the genocide's background, and an unforgettable

Recommended by Mia Farrow.

Mia Farrow

The title is an actual quote from a note to his pastor from a man who knew he was going to be killed the next day. [source]

8

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Ishmael Beah

4.6

The devastating story of war through the eyes of a child soldier. Beah tells 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 became a soldier.

My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a

9

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

MALCOLM X

4.6

Preview Summary

With its first great victory in the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the civil rights movement gained the powerful momentum it needed to sweep forward into its crucial decade, the 1960s. As voices of protest and change rose above the din of history and false promises, one voice sounded more urgently, more passionately, than the rest. Malcolm X—once called the mo

Recommended by Casey Neistat, Ryan Holiday, David Coogan, and 2 others.

Casey Neistat

Founder/368 Creative Space

Aside from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Casey's favorite book is The Second World War by John Keegan. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

I forget who said it but I heard someone say that Catcher in the Rye was to young white boys what the Autobiography of Malcolm X was to young black boys. Personally, I prefer that latter over the former. I would much rather read about and emulate a man who is born into adversity and pain, struggles with criminality, does prison time, teaches himself to read through the dictionary, finds religion and then becomes an activist for Civil Rights before being gunned down by his former supporters when he tempers the hate and anger that had long defined parts of his message. [source]

David Coogan

His memoir describes that process of transformation from a common narrative of street hustler and limited opportunities, struggling in a racist society, to this radicalization in part through literacy, in part through literature and religion. [source]

10

The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912

Thomas Pakenham

4.6

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

Recommended by Alec Russell and Sam Kiley.

Alec Russell

I first went to South Africa in an extraordinary, tumultuous time, just before the end of apartheid. It was May 1993, and no one was quite sure what way the country was headed. So my first year there was spent covering the very traumatic final year of white rule and the rise to power of the ANC, and then I stayed on for another four years covering Mandela’s presidency as a foreign correspondent. [source]

Sam Kiley

You can’t understand anything about contemporary Africa without reading that book. [source]

11

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Michelle Alexander

4.5

Preview Summary

"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently o

Recommended by Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Temin.

Mark Zuckerberg

Founder/Facebook

I read The New Jim Crow, a study of how the U.S. justice system disproportionately criminalizes and jails blacks and Latinos. Making our criminal justice system fairer and more effective is a huge challenge for our country. I’m going to keep learning about this topic, but some things are already clear: We can’t jail our way to a just society, and our current system isn’t working (adapted with permission from Facebook’s A Year of Books project). [source]

Peter Temin

The new Jim Crow that Michelle Alexander is talking about is mass incarceration. [source]

12

They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America

Ivan Van Sertima

4.5

They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America. Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves,

13

The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence

Martin Meredith

4.5

"The fortunes of Africa have changed dramatically in the fifty years since the independence era began. As Europe's colonial powers withdrew, dozens of new states were launched amid much jubilation and to the world's applause. African leaders stepped forward with energy and enthusiasm to tackle the problems of development and nation-building, boldly proclaiming their hopes of establishing new socie

14

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

Jason Stearns

4.5

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 reported book, Jason Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the exp

15

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

4.4

A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a

Recommended by Michael Peel and Michelle Jana Chan.

Michael Peel

Chimamanda Adichie broke the ice in writing about the Biafran war. [source]

Michelle Jana Chan

Her story is told by three powerful, self-aware and intellectually upright characters who are swept up in the struggle to establish an independent Nigeria. It’s a call to arms. [source]

16

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

Alistair Horne

4.4

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror

Recommended by Audrey Kurth Cronin.

Audrey Kurth Cronin

This is a brilliant book, possibly one of the best written in the 20th century. It’s about the Algerian War for Independence, a very violent case study. Horne crafts it into a rare combination of an excellent detailed historical book about a war that also brings along a thought-provoking and timeless strategic perspective. [source]

Cover unavailable

17

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza

4.4

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.

Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other

18

Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya

Caroline Elkins

4.4

Britain fought in the Second World War to save the world from fascism. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of one-and-a half-million - to hold them in c

Recommended by Julia Lovell.

Julia Lovell

The uncomfortable fact remains that a large slice of the British Empire was bankrolled by opium money. [source]

19

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Walter Rodney

4.4

The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power. Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to defend one's interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peopl

20

Africa: A Biography of the Continent

John Reader

4.3

"Awe-inspiring . . . a masterly synthesis."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Deeply penetrating, intensely thought-provoking and thoroughly informed . . . one of the most important general surveys of Africa that has been produced in the last decade." --The Washington Post

In 1978, paleontologists in East Africa discovered the earliest evidence of our divergence from the apes: three pre-human footpr

21

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo revolution

C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel James

4.3

In 1789 the West Indian colony of San Domingo supplied two-thirds of the overseas trade of France. The entire structure of what was arguably the most profitable colony in the world rested on the labour of half a million slaves. In 1791 the waves of unrest inspired by the French Revolution reached across the Atlantic dividing the loyalties of the white population of the island. The brutally treated

Recommended by Ben Horowitz, Christian Wisskirchen, and Trevor Phillips.

Ben Horowitz

Co-founder/Andreessen Horowitz

A management and cultural genius better than anybody that I’ve ever read about or learned from. [source]

Christian Wisskirchen

The book highlights the achievement of the Haitian nation to be the only ever slave revolution achieving independence by armed struggle. [source]

Trevor Phillips

This book is very complex because it does not make the rebellion’s leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, into a sort of plaster saint. [source]

22

The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879

Donald R. Morris

4.3

Filled with colorful characters, dramatic battles like Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift, and an inexorable narrative momentum, this unsurpassed history details the sixty-year existence of the world's mightiest African empire; from its brutal formation and zenith under the military genius Shaka , through its inevitable collision with white expansionism, to its dissolution under Cetshwayo in the Zulu W

Recommended by John Carlin.

John Carlin

This book has really stayed with me, and one thing I like about it is there is a continual undercurrent of deep respect, if not admiration, for the Zulu nation. The narrative has something of the rattling good yarn about it, while at the same time being extremely meticulously researched and scholarly at its core, but there is a lightness of touch in the tone and there are occasional wry asides. You put it all together and it adds up to a very satisfying and rich cocktail. [source]

23

Precolonial Black Africa

Cheikh Anta Diop, Harold Salemson

4.3

This comparison of the political and social systems of Europe and black Africa from antiquity to the formation of modern states demonstrates the black contribution to the development of Western civilization.

Recommended by George Ayittey.

George Ayittey

He wrote about black African civilisation before colonialism. How blacks governed themselves, ran their economies and so on. Africa’s ethnic societies, which still exist, take decisions by consensus not by dictatorship. Traditional rulers – chiefs and kings – are surrounded by councils, without which they are powerless. And these rulers can be recalled or removed for dereliction of duty. The larger polities in traditional Africa – empires (Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Great Zimbabwe) and kingdoms (the Ashanti Kingdom, the Ga Kingdom) – were all confederacies, characterised by decentralisation of power and a great deal of devolution of authority. The modern political systems – military dictatorships and one-party-state systems – are alien to Africa. The relevance of culture in development is increasingly being espoused by Africans. [source]

24

The Shadow of the Sun

Ryszard Kapuscinski

4.3

In 1957, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa to witness the beginning of the end of colonial rule as the first African correspondent of Poland's state newspaper. From the early days of independence in Ghana to the ongoing ethnic genocide in Rwanda, Kapuscinski has crisscrossed vast distances pursuing the swift, and often violent, events that followed liberation. Kapuscinski hitchhikes with carav

Recommended by Will Storr.

Will Storr

Once you discover Kapuściński, it’s a love affair for life. He’s such a beautiful writer. [source]

25

The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver

4.3

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of on

Recommended by Brigid Keenan and Michelle Jana Chan.

Brigid Keenan

This is about everything that can go wrong when you are in another country and faced with another culture. It’s about a family – primarily it centres on a father and his four daughters – who move to the Congo from America as missionaries. The book is tragic because the father has the best intentions of making a good life for his family, but he’s too closed-minded and set in his American ways. I identify with the daughters because they have a childish sensitivity to their surroundings that adults don’t always have. It is important if you go to live in other countries to be aware of the cultural differences, otherwise you can upset people. [source]

Michelle Jana Chan

It’s quite an old-fashioned story of sin and redemption, yet a hugely ambitious tale for Kingsolver to take on. It’s about filial responsibility as a wife and as daughters and sisters; it’s about guilt, bitterness and revenge. [source]

Cover unavailable

26

The Wretched of the Earth

Frantz Fanon

4.3

A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Fanon's masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Said's Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is now available in a new translation that updates its language fo

27

The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor

Martin Meredith

4.3

Africa has been coveted for its riches ever since the era of the Pharaohs. In past centuries, it was the lure of gold, ivory, and slaves that drew fortune-seekers, merchant-adventurers, and conquerors from afar. In modern times, the focus of attention is on oil, diamonds, and other valuable minerals.

Land was another prize. The Romans relied on their colonies in northern Africa for vital grain ship

Recommended by Teresa Clarke.

28

The Mis-Education of the Negro

Carter Godwin Woodson

4.3

Recommended by Bianca Belair.

Bianca Belair

For #BHM I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 23rd Book: The Mis-Education of the Negro -By Carter G. Woodson A MUST READ. Carter G. Woodson “the Father of Black History” created “Negro History Week” that was later expanded to Black History Month https://t.co/4ye1ZMPaZs [source]

29

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Ibram X. Kendi

4.3

Preview Summary

Americans like to insist that they are living in a post-racial, color-blind society. In fact, racist thought is alive and well; it has simply become more sophisticated and more insidious. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, racist ideas in America have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.

In this

Recommended by Bianca Belair.

Bianca Belair

For #BHM I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 27th Book: Stamped from the Beginning Written by: @DrIbram When I found this book I couldn’t believe that I had never learned about the information in this book. A book everyone should read. Eye-opening! https://t.co/pLaifB8DFI [source]

30

From Babylon to Timbuktu: A History of the Ancient Black Races Including the Black Hebrews

Rudolph R. Windsor

4.3

This carefully researched book is a significant addition to this vital field of knowledge. It sets forth, in fascinating detail, the history, from earliest recorded times, of the black races of the Middle East and Africa.

31

Congo: een geschiedenis

David Van Reybrouck

4.3

Er is aan het begin van de eenentwintigste eeuw nauwelijks een roeriger natie dan Congo, het reusachtige land in het hart van Afrika, dat barst van de grondstoffen die onontbeerlijk zijn in onze moderne tijd – én van de gruwelijke conflicten. Hoe kon de vroegere, relatief rustige kolonie van België, sinds 1960 onafhankelijk, zo veranderen? David Van Reybrouck beschrijft voor het eerst de verbijste

32

The Boer War

Thomas Pakenham

4.3

More than two hundred illustrations, photographs, and maps combine with an abridged edition of the author's critically acclaimed The Boer War to chronicle the events, personalities, causes, and consequences of the war. History Bk Club.

33

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

Mark Bowden

4.3

On October 3, 1993, about a hundred U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into a teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia, to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord. The action was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they spent a long and terrible night fighting thousands of armed Somalis. By morning, eighteen Americans were dead, and more than seventy badly injured. Mark Bowden

Recommended by Toby Young.

Toby Young

As a journalist who rarely leaves my desk, I don’t get an opportunity to do much reportage – but I get a vicarious thrill from reading it. Some of my favourite journalism books are examples of sustained reporting about a single subject – The Studio by John Gregory Dunne, for instance, and American Ground by William Langewiesche – but I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a book of reportage more than Black Hawk Down. [source]

34

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

Roméo Dallaire, Samantha Power

4.2

On the 10th anniversary of when UN peacekeepers landed in Rwanda, Random House Canada proudly publishes the unforgettable 1st-hand account of the genocide by the leader of the mission. Digging deep into shattering memories, Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naïveté, racism & international politics. His message is simple, undeniable: Never again.

When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire was cal

35

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Wilkerson

4.2

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic

Recommended by Britni Danielle.

Britni Danielle

.@byshondaland announced its first @Netflix projects, including "The Warmth of Other Suns" a series based on Isabel Wilkerson's book about the Great Migration, and a documentary on @msdebbieallen's 'Hot Chocolate Nutcracker." Full slate: https://t.co/rLCk65Mmyj [source]

36

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

4.2

A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-

37

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo

Michela Wrong

4.2

He was known as "the Leopard," and for the thirty-two years of his reign Mobutu Sese Seko, president of Zaire, showed all the cunning of his namesake, seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne

38

Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

Gerard Prunier

4.2

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 for a sweeping and disastrous upheaval.
Prunier vividly describes the grisly aftermath of the

39

Black Skin, White Masks

Frantz Fanon

4.2

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon’s masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers.

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the worl

Recommended by Jonathan Webber and Kurt Barling.

Jonathan Webber

Fanon was particularly interested in the psychiatric problems you could face if you were a victim of racism, particularly of anti-black racism in France. [source]

Kurt Barling

Fanon was saying that black people are re-burdened by skin colour in a white-dominated society. [source]

40

Slave: My True Story

Damien Lewis, Mende Nazer

4.2

Mende Nazer lost her childhood at age twelve, when she was sold into slavery. It all began one horrific night in 1993, when Arab raiders swept through her Nuba village, murdering the adults and rounding up thirty-one children, including Mende.

Mende was sold to a wealthy Arab family who lived in Sudan's capital city, Khartoum. So began her dark years of enslavement. Her Arab owners called her "Yeb

Recommended by Richard Cockett.

Richard Cockett

It’s another firsthand account of Sudan and some of the worst aspects of living there. Mende Nazar is a Southerner, born and brought up in the Nuba mountains, in the borderland between the Muslim North and the Christian South, where the two sides of Sudan have mixed most impressively. A lot of families there will have Christian and Muslim members, and she writes about this well: reflecting which particular bunch of missionaries passed through when these people were being brought up. In that sense it’s always held up as one of the most relaxed, easily intermingled, inter-racial, inter-ethnic parts of Sudan. But when the civil war reignited in 1983, the Nuba mountains were in the front line. The North felt the SPLA were very present in the Nuba mountains, and their tactic was the classic Maoist counterinsurgency doctrine to ‘drain the sea to kill the fish’, attacking all villages and towns that might be supporting the SPLA. Nazar’s village was one of them, and the strategy was to kill as many of the men as possible and to enslave the women, young men and boys, who were taken to the North, mainly Khartoum, where they would act as essentially slaves in the houses of rich Khartoumese. Nazar tells of how she was captured and taken to Khartoum and then spent several years in the house of a relatively rich family before being taken off to England where she was expected to act as a slave in the household of an embassy official. It’s from there that she escaped with the help of a Sudanese she met in London, had a famous asylum procedure, and then wrote this book, or rather told it to the journalist Damien Lewis. [source]

41

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (World War II Liberation Trilogy, #1)

Rick Atkinson

4.2

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In the first volume of his monumental trilogy about the liberation of Europe in WW II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the riveting story of the war in North Africa
The liberation of Europe and the destruction of the Third Reich is a story of courage and enduring triumph, of calamity and miscalculation. In this first volume of

42

Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak

Jean Hatzfeld, Linda Coverdale

4.2

To make the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda is a painful task that we have no right to shirk-it is part of being a moral adult."
-Susan Sontag

In the late 1990s, French author and journalist Jean Hatzfeld made several journeys into the hilly, marshy region of the Bugesera, one of the areas most devastated by the Rwandan genocide of April 1994, where an average of five out of six Tutsis

Recommended by Philip Gourevitch.

Philip Gourevitch

One of the things that writing about Rwanda doesn’t offer you – although writing about many other fascinating places does – is a substantial literature by the people you’re writing about. There just aren’t many books by Rwandans that are readily accessible to an outsider. There is a Kinyarwandan (Kinyarwanda is the language) oral tradition, there’s a lot of poetry and in the last century more and more written stuff, but little of it has been translated, and of the writing on the genocide that’s taken place – their own recent history – most of it has taken place in French or English. And most of it has not been done by Rwandans. Under the circumstances, I would say that the most fascinating literary project about Rwanda in the last few years has been by Jean Hatzfeld. He is a French writer and reporter who worked for a long time for the newspaper Libération and covered the Balkan wars. For the last six or seven years, he has been visiting Rwanda on and off, and always going to the same small town in the southeast. The first book he wrote took a kind of a hybrid form – a mixture of oral history and personal reflection – and it was based on the stories of a group of survivors who had spent the 100 days or so of the genocide hiding in these dense papyrus swamps near their home. They were being hunted there by a gang of killers from around their village, people whom they knew. What makes this a great book is not just its subject matter, but its style and its voice. Hatzfeld is obviously someone who spent a huge amount of time just hanging out in the village, in the bars, in the backyards, in the fields, with people who had had this experience – and he relates their stories with unmediated immediacy, and with great soul. [source]

43

Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide

Lindqvist, Sven

4.2

"Exterminate All the Brutes" is a searching examination of Europe's dark history in Africa and the origins of genocide. Using Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as his point of departure, Sven Lindqvist takes us on a haunting tour through the colonial past, interwoven with a modern-day travelogue. Retracing the steps of European explorers, missionaries, politicians, and historians in Africa from th

44

Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism

John Henrik Clarke

4.2

Originally published by A & B Books, Brooklyn, New York.

45

Another Day of Life

Ryszard Kapuscinski

4.1

'This is a very personal book, about being alone and lost'. In 1975 Kapuscinski's employers sent him to Angola to cover the civil war that had broken out after independence. For months he watched as Luanda and then the rest of the country collapsed into a civil war that was in the author's words 'sloppy, dogged and cruel'. In his account, Kapuscinski demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to descr

46

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak

Jean Hatzfeld, Linda Coverdale, Susan Sontag

4.1

During the spring of 1994, in a tiny country called Rwanda, some 800,000 people were hacked to death, one by one, by their neighbors in a gruesome civil war. Several years later, journalist Jean Hatzfeld traveled to Rwanda to interview ten participants in the killings, eliciting extraordinary testimony from these men about the genocide they perpetrated. As Susan Sontag wrote in the preface, Machet

47

History of Africa

Kevin Shillington

4.1

In a single volume, History of Africa offers a richly illustrated narrative introduction to the history of the entire continent, from earliest times through to the present day. The fourth edition has been thoroughly refreshed and contains even more student friendly features, including a glossary and a Debates in African history feature.

48

Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America

Lerone Bennett Jr

4.1

"Before the Mayflower" traces black history from its origins in western Africa, through the transatlantic journey that ended in slavery, the Reconstruction period, the Jim Crow era, and the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in an exploration of the complex realities of African-American life in the 1990s. Here is the most recent scholarship on the geographic, social, ethnic

49

Zulu Rising

Ian Knight

4.1

The battle of Isandlwana was the single most destructive incident in the 150-year history of the British colonization of South Africa. In one bloody day more than 800 British troops, 500 of their allies, and at least 2,000 Zulus were killed in a staggering defeat for the British empire. The consequences of the battle echoed brutally across the following decades as Britain took ruthless revenge on

50

Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-87

Thomas Sankara, Samantha Anderson

4.1

The leader of the Burkina Faso revolution recounts how peasants and workers in this West African country began confronting hunger, illiteracy, and economic backwardness prior to the 1987 coup in which Sankara was murdered.

51

Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill

Candice Millard

4.1

From New York Times bestselling author of Destiny of the Republic and The River of Doubt, a thrilling narrative of Winston Churchill's extraordinary and little-known exploits during the Boer War

At age twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He

52

Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone

Martin Dugard

4.1

What really happened to Dr. David Livingstone? The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Survivor: The Ultimate Game investigates in this thrilling account.

With the utterance of a single line--"Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"--a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and j

53

World's Great Men of Color, Volume I

J. A. Rogers, John Henrik Clarke

4.1

The classic, definitive title on the great Black figures in world history, beginning in antiquity and reaching into the modern age.

World’s Great Men of Color is the comprehensive guide to the most noteworthy Black personalities in world history and their significance. J.A. Rogers spent the majority of his lifetime pioneering the field of Black studies with his exhaustive research on the major name

54

The Emperor

Ryszard Kapuscinski

4.1

Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Elect of God, Lion of Judah, His Most Puissant Majesty and Distinguished Highness the Emperor of Ethiopia, reigned from 1930 until he was overthrown by the army in 1974. While the fighting still raged, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Poland's leading foreign correspondent, traveled to Ethiopia to seek out and interview Selassie's servants and closest associates on how the Emper

55

Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa

Martin Meredith

4.1

Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced first upon the world's richest deposits of diamonds, and then upon its richest deposits of gold. What followed was a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land,

56

Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War

Perseus

4.1

In a time of death and terror, Leymah Gbowee brought Liberia's women together--and together they led a nation to peace. As a young woman, Gbowee was broken by the Liberian civil war, a brutal conflict that tore apart her life and claimed the lives of countless relatives and friends. As a young mother trapped in a nightmare of domestic abuse, she found the courage to turn her bitterness into action

57

When the World Was Black: The Untold History of the World's First Civilizations, Part One: Prehistoric Cultures: When the World Was Black: The Untold History of the World's First Civilizations 1

Supreme Understanding

4.1

In this book, you'll learn about the history of Black people. I don't mean the history you typically learn in school, which most likely began with slavery and ended with the Civil Rights Movement. we're talking about Black history BEFORE that. Long before that. In this book, we've covered over 200,000 years of Black history. For many of us, that sounds strange. We can't even imagine what the past

58

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra

Toby Wilkinson

4.1

Toby Wilkinson combines grand narrative sweep with detailed knowledge of hieroglyphs and the iconography of power, to reveal ancient Egypt in all its complexity. We see the relentless propaganda, the cut-throat politics, the brutality and repression that lay behind the appearance of unchanging monarchy.

59

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

4.1

One of today’s most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following the murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamist who threatened that she would be next. She made headlines again when she was stripped of her citizenship and resigned from the Dutch Parliament.

Infidel shows the coming of age of this distinguished political superstar and champion

60

Twelve Years a Slave

Solomon Northup

4.1

Twelve Years a Slave, sub-title: Narrative of Solomon Northup, citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana, is a memoir by Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson. It is a slave narrative of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped in Washington, D.C., sold into slavery,

Recommended by Ryan Holiday.

Ryan Holiday

Author

I read two important memoirs from slaves as well, and strongly recommend 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup and A Slave in the White House about Paul Jennings. [source]

61

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Richard Rothstein

4.1

Preview Summary

Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson).

Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudi

62

Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

Mahmood Mamdani

4.1

In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either direct (French) or indirec

63

The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors

Frances Cress Welsing

4.1

64

Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure

Michael Asher

4.1

The British campaign in the Sudan in Queen Victoria's reign is an epic tale of adventure more thrilling than any fiction. The story begins with the massacre of the 11,000 strong Hicks Pasha column in 1883. Sent to evacuate the country, British hero General Gordon was surrounded and murdered in Khartoum by an army of dervishes led by the Mahdi. The relief mission arrived 2 days too late. The result

65

Assata: An Autobiography

Assata Shakur

4.1

On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizatio

66

Introduction To African Civilizations

John G. Jackson

4.1

This work challenges all the standard approaches to the saga of African history, from the dawn of prehistory to the modern resurgent Africa of today.

67

Bury the Chains

Adam Hochschild

4.1

This is the story of a handful of men, led by Thomas Clarkson, who defied the slave trade and ignited the first human rights movement. Beginning in 1788, a group of Abolitionists moved the cause of anti-slavery from the floor of Parliament to the homes of 300,000 people boycotting Caribbean sugar, and gave a platform to freed slaves.

Recommended by David Olusoga.

David Olusoga

This book came out at the moment when many of us in Britain were busy marking the bicentenary of the end of the slave trade in 2007. In all Adam’s books he places character and biography at the very heart of his stories and this is another example of him doing that brilliantly. People are perhaps hard-wired to love story, so putting people at the absolute centre of a narrative is a very powerful way to write. In some ways I think maybe it took an American, an outsider to the British story of race, slavery and abolition, to see these characters afresh. Adam looked again at people like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson and tried to discover who they were, and through their biographies he explored the bigger, overarching and convoluted story of the rise and ultimate fall of British slavery. [source]

68

Cry, the Beloved Country

Alan Paton

4.1

Cry, the Beloved Country, the most famous and important novel in South Africa’s history, was an immediate worldwide bestseller in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when

Recommended by Cecile Richards.

Cecile Richards

It’s a novel – I know that was sort of cheating a little bit. [source]

69

Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles

Richard Dowden

4.1

After a lifetime's close observation of the continent, one of the world's finest Africa correspondents has penned a landmark book on life and death in modern Africa. In captivating prose, Dowden spins tales of cults and commerce in Senegal and traditional spirituality in Sierra Leone; analyzes the impact of oil and the internet on Nigeria and aid on Sudan; and examines what has gone so badly wrong

70

When We Ruled: The Ancient and Medieval History of Black Civilisations

Robin Walker

4.1

When We Ruled is by far the best general work on the ancient and medieval history of Black people there has ever been.

This landmark publication, which is superbly illustrated with high quality photographs, maps and drawings, provides an extraordinary and cutting-edge synthesis of the archaeological data, the documentary evidence, and the historical linguistic research. It recounts the fascinating

71

Out of Africa

Isak Dinesen

4.1

Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories "like Scheherazade.

Recommended by Brigid Keenan and Helena Frith Powell.

Brigid Keenan

An incredible introduction to Africa, and I read the book when I needed it most. [source]

Helena Frith Powell

I found the book itself inspirational, and I found the fact that a woman had written it doubly inspirational. [source]

72

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

Tim Butcher

4.1

A compulsively readable account of a journey to the Congo — a country virtually inaccessible to the outside world — vividly told by a daring and adventurous journalist.

Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomized the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph corresponde

73

What is the What

Dave Eggers

4.0

This is the story of a man who, as a boy, was separated from his family in Sudan's brutal civil war; who trekked across Africa's punishing wilderness with thousands of other children; who survived aerial bombardment and attacks by militias and wild animals; who ate whatever he could find or nothing at all; who, as a boy, considered ending his life to end the suffering; and who eventually mad it to

Recommended by Barack Obama and Robert Eaglestone.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

As a devoted reader, the president has been linked to a lengthy list of novels and poetry collections over the years — he admits he enjoys a thriller. [source]

Robert Eaglestone

Eggers plays with the relationship between reality and fiction. What is the What might be thought of as containing chunks of reality [source]

74

The Book of Negroes

Lawrence Hill

4.0

Based on a true story, "The Book of Negroes" tells the story of Aminata, a young girl abducted from her village in Mali aged 11 in 1755, and who, after a deathly journey on a slave ship where she witnesses the brutal repression of a slave revolt, is sold to a plantation owner in South Carolina, who rapes her. She is brought to New York, where she escapes her owner, and finds herself helping the Br

75

Cleopatra: A Life

Stacy Schiff

4.0

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator.

Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours

Recommended by Danielle Morrill and Anne Thériault.

Anne Thériault

@annfosterwriter Omg isn’t this book the best?? [source]

76

The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

Clemantine Wamariya

4.0

A riveting story of dislocation, survival, and the power of the imagination to save us

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were "thunder." It was 1994, and in 100 days more than 800,000 people would be murdered in Rwanda and millions more displaced.

77

Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880

W. E. B. Du Bois

4.0

The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time.

Recommended by Imani Perry.

Imani Perry

W.E.B. Du Bois was the father of American sociology and one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. His classic text, The Souls of Black Folk, was published in 1903. Black Reconstruction in America came thirty years later. [source]

78

The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth

Tom Burgis

4.0

The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other “emerging markets” have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of t

Recommended by Trevor Ncube.

Trevor Ncube

@shumbamutasa @PTChimusoro Agreed. Powerful book. Read it about 2 years ago. #twitterbookclub [source]

79

Roots: The Saga of an American Family

Alex Haley

4.0

When he was a boy in Henning, Tennessee, Alex Haley's grandmother used to tell him stories about their family—stories that went back to her grandparents, and their grandparents, down through the generations all the way to a man she called "the African." She said he had lived across the ocean near what he called the "Kamby Bolongo" and had been out in the forest one day chopping wood to make a drum

80

The White Nile

Alan Moorehead

4.0

Relive all the thrills and adventure of Alan Moorehead's classic bestseller The White Nile -- the daring exploration of the Nile River in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was at that time the most mysterious and impenetrable region on earth. Capturing in breathtaking prose the larger-than-life personalities of such notable figures as Stanley, Livingstone, Burton and many others, Th

Recommended by Dan Morrison.

Dan Morrison

Because it’s fun, rollicking and, at times, hilarious – it’s a wonderful read. It is the prose of someone who was educated before Marxism entered the campuses and before any whiff of political correctness existed. It has no influence on him, and the book takes some heat for that. But both the The White Nile and its companion, The Blue Nile, have the best qualities of history. [source]

81

A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It

Stephen Kinzer

4.0

A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It is the story of Paul Kagame, a refugee who, after a generation of exile, found his way home. Learn about President Kagame, who strives to make Rwanda the first middle-income country in Africa, in a single generation. In this adventurous tale, learn about Kagame's early fascination with Che Guevara and James Bond, his years as an intelli

82

Unbowed

Wangari Maathai

4.0

Hugely charismatic, humble, and possessed of preternatural luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya.

Born in a rural village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though mos

83

Mansa Musa and the Empire of Mali

P. James Oliver

4.0

Oliver's well-researched biography of Mansa Musa reads like an exotic tale of gold, glory, and adventure. During his long reign as Mali's emperor, Mansa Musa led his empire into its Golden Age; presided over a spectacular, 60,000 person, 9,000 mile pilgrimage; founded a university in Timbuktu; and helped revolutionize architecture across the Sudan. Oliver does not allow Musa's story to get bogged

84

The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe

Peter Godwin

4.0

Journalist Peter Godwin has covered wars. As a soldier, he's fought them. But nothing prepared him for the surreal mix of desperation and hope he encountered when he returned to Zimbabwe, his broken homeland.

Godwin arrived as Robert Mugabe, the country's dictator for 30 years, has finally lost an election. Mugabe's tenure has left Zimbabwe with the world's highest rate of inflation and the shorte

85

Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur

Halima Bashir, Damien Lewis

4.0

Like the single white eyelash that graces her row of dark lashes--seen by her people as a mark of good fortune--Halima Bashir's story stands out. Tears of the Desert is the first memoir ever written by a woman caught up in the war in Darfur. It is a survivor's tale of a conflicted country, a resilient people, and the uncompromising spirit of a young woman who refused to be silenced.

Born into the Z

86

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Dambisa Moyo

4.0

In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.

In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unfli

Recommended by George Ayittey.

George Ayittey

Yes. Dambisa Moyo, who was a student of mine at American University in Washington DC, represents a growing chorus of Africans who regard the Western foreign aid-driven development model – or the Washington consensus – to be an abysmal failure. More than $800bn in Western aid has been pumped into Africa since 1960, with little to show for it except a multitude of black elephants, show-airports amid institutional decay, and crumpled infrastructure. Moyo argues that foreign aid actually made Africans poorer by creating a dependency on aid, depreciating their pride and dignity, and preventing them from crafting their own development models. All aid to Africa should be halted in five years, she urges. [source]

87

I Write What I Like: Selected Writings

Steve Biko

4.0

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." Like all of Steve Biko's writings, those words testify to the passion, courage, and keen insight that made him one of the most powerful figures in South Africa's struggle against apartheid. They also reflect his conviction that black people in South Africa could not be liberated until they united to break their ch

88

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Chinua Achebe

4.0

From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart comes a longawaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation, then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe’s life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people, many of whom

89

An Autobiography

Angela Y. Davis

4.0

Her own powerful story to 1972, told with warmth, brilliance, humor & conviction. The author, a political activist, reflects upon the people & incidents that have influenced her life & commitment to global liberation of the oppressed.

90

The Great Anglo-Boer War

Byron Farwell

4.0

The Boer War (1899-1902) was one of the last of the romantic wars, pitting a sturdy, stubborn pioneer people, fighting to establish the independence of their tiny nation, against the might of the British Empire at its peak. Farwell captures the incredible feats, the personal heroism, the unbelievable folly, and the many incidents of humor as well as tragedy.

91

Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire

David Anderson

4.0

In "a gripping narrative that is all but impossible to put down" (Joseph C. Miller), Histories of the Hanged exposes the long-hidden colonial crimes of the British in Kenya. This groundbreaking work tells how the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau between 1952 and 1960 dominated the final bloody decade of imperialism in East Africa. Using extraordinary new e

92

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts

Joshua Hammer

4.0

To save ancient Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven in this “fast-paced narrative that is…part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract, and part out-and-out thriller” (The Washington Post).

In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the

Recommended by Steve Schale.

Steve Schale

Took me 2 months to get thru book 16 of 2019. I’ve long been fascinated by the history of Timbuktu, and Joshua Hammer’s book is an epic tale of how much of that history was saved during the Al Qaeda occupation of the city in 2012-13. It’s a really great read. https://t.co/ukQL7bdo8h [source]

93

100 African-Americans Who Shaped American History

Chrisanne Beckner

4.0

Teeming with interesting nuggets of fact and information, 100 African Americans Who Shaped American History includes such legendary men and women as Benjamin Banneker, Dred Scott, Mary Church Terrell, George Washington Carver and Bessie Smith. Also included are Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall and many, many more. Organized chronologically and meticulously researched, this bo

94

Black Pioneers of Science and Invention

Louis Haber

4.0

A readable, perceptive account of the lives of fourteen gifted innovators who have played important roles in scientific and industrial progress. The achievements of Benjamin Banneker, Granville T. Woods, George Washington Carver, and others have made jobs easier, saved countless lives, and in many cases, altered the course of history.
Includes a bibliography and an index.

95

Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa

Peter Godwin

4.0

Recommended by Georgina Godwin.

Georgina Godwin

In Mukiwa he talks with the voice of a child and that child grows up during the book – it’s very affecting. It’s really a love letter to my mother. And the second one is a love letter to my father, or, perhaps an examination of him. It’s also a kind of Zimbabwe 101 and it’s what new diplomats to Zim read because it explains what happened, why it happened. [source]

96

Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization: Exploding the Myths

Anthony T. Browder

4.0

Tony Browder's book, Nile Valley Contributions To Civilization, is about correctinf some of these misconceptions so the reader, in fact, cane be introduced to a Nile Valley Civilizations in order to understand its role as the parent of future civilizations.

97

Dirty Little Secrets About Black History: Its Heroes & Other Troublemakers

Claud Anderson, Joann Anderson, Florence Jekins, Robert Coleman

4.0

98

I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation

Michela Wrong

4.0

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. Fascist Italy wanted Eritrea as the springboard for a new, racially pure Roman empire; Britain

99

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois

4.0

This landmark book is a founding work in the literature of black protest. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently

Recommended by Barack Obama.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites: Moby Dick, Herman Melville Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch Gilead, Marylinne Robinson Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene The Quiet American, Graham Greene Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Gandhi’s autobiography Working, Studs Terkel Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren [source]

100

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Edward E Baptist

4.0

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution—the nation’s original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America’s later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy.

As historian Edward Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolut

Recommended by Cory Ondrejka.

Cory Ondrejka

VP of Engineering/Facebook

It's a heart-wrenching but eye-opening look at the safe ways America looks back at slavery and its impact on modern capitalism. During an election cycle focused on populism and anger, this is a book every American should read. [source]