100 Best African History Books of All Time

Steve CrawshawLarge 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... (Source)

Suzannah LipscombThis 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)

Bill GatesAs 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... (Source)

Mark SusterPlease don't read @Trevornoah's book "Born a Crime." It's such a remarkable story that you need to hear him narrate it on @audible_com. You'll laugh out loud, cry, get angry, be in disbelief. You'll have many "driveway moments" where you can't stop even though you're home (Source)

Heather ZynczakSo 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)

Richard BransonToday 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)

Barack ObamaAs 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... (Source)

Bianca BelairFor #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)

Greg CarrHappy 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)

Barack ObamaAs 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... (Source)

Jacqueline NovogratzThe 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)

Sam KileyI think what’s so fantastic about it is that it’s sort of portentous, if that’s the right word, in that it captures that moment between the end of colonisation and independence, and the inevitable crushing of Africa’s dreams. I can’t remember exactly when it was written, but it was very early on in the process. It sounds really pessimistic – I mean, it’s a beautifully written book, but it’s the... (Source)

Mia FarrowThe 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)

Casey NeistatAside from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Casey's favorite book is The Second World War by John Keegan. (Source)

Ryan HolidayI 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... (Source)

Keith EllisonMalcolm X is somebody that everybody in America’s prisons today could look at and say, ‘You know what, I can emerge, I can evolve' (Source)

Alec RussellI 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 KileyYou can’t understand anything about contemporary Africa without reading that book. (Source)

Mark ZuckerbergI 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... (Source)

Peter TeminThe new Jim Crow that Michelle Alexander is talking about is mass incarceration. (Source)

Michelle Jana ChanHer 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)

Michael PeelChimamanda Adichie broke the ice in writing about the Biafran war. (Source)

Audrey Kurth CroninThis 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)

Julia LovellThe uncomfortable fact remains that a large slice of the British Empire was bankrolled by opium money. (Source)

Ben HorowitzA management and cultural genius better than anybody that I’ve ever read about or learned from. (Source)

Christian WisskirchenThe book highlights the achievement of the Haitian nation to be the only ever slave revolution achieving independence by armed struggle. (Source)

Trevor PhillipsThis book is very complex because it does not make the rebellion’s leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, into a sort of plaster saint. (Source)

John CarlinThis 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.... (Source)

George AyitteyHe 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... (Source)

Will StorrOnce you discover Kapuściński, it’s a love affair for life. He’s such a beautiful writer. (Source)

Brigid KeenanThis 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... (Source)

Michelle Jana ChanIt’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)

Bianca BelairFor #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)

Bianca BelairFor #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)

Toby YoungAs 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... (Source)

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)

Jonathan WebberFanon 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 BarlingFanon was saying that black people are re-burdened by skin colour in a white-dominated society. (Source)

Richard CockettIt’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... (Source)

Philip GourevitchOne 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... (Source)

Ryan HolidayI 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)

David OlusogaThis 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... (Source)

Cecile RichardsIt’s a novel – I know that was sort of cheating a little bit. (Source)

Brigid KeenanAn incredible introduction to Africa, and I read the book when I needed it most. (Source)

Helena Frith PowellI found the book itself inspirational, and I found the fact that a woman had written it doubly inspirational. (Source)

Barack ObamaAs 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 EaglestoneEggers plays with the relationship between reality and fiction. What is the What might be thought of as containing chunks of reality (Source)

Anne Thériault@annfosterwriter Omg isn’t this book the best?? (Source)

Imani PerryW.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)

Trevor Ncube@shumbamutasa @PTChimusoro Agreed. Powerful book. Read it about 2 years ago. #twitterbookclub (Source)

Dan MorrisonBecause 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)

Mia FarrowFive Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at editor@fivebooks.com (Source)

George AyitteyYes. 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... (Source)

Steve SchaleTook 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)

Georgina GodwinIn 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)

Barack ObamaAccording 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... (Source)

Cory OndrejkaIt'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)