Best General Africa Travel Books

Readers, as if on African safari, encounter eight wild animals that come alive using never-before-seen Photicular technology. Accompanying the images is Safari , the guide: It begins with an evocative journal of a safari along the Mara River in Kenya and interweaves the history of safaris. "Shots of cheetahs, rhinos, and gazelles spring to life as the pages turn." "Lenticular technology takes a big leap forward with this virtual safari." ( Entertainment Weekly ). “Shots of cheetahs, rhinos, and gazelles spring to life as the pages turn.”.

Journey Into Africa through the lens of National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting, whose images have created an enduring vision of Africa’s diverse landscapes and wildlife. She earned a Lowell Thomas Award for Best Magazine Article on Foreign Travel for her National Geographic Traveler story, “The Last Real Africa.” The editor of Lanting’s books, she has also filmed and produced stories for the National Geographic Channel. His influential work appears in books, magazines, and exhibitions around the world and has been commissioned frequently by National Geographic. Lanting’s books include Life: A Journey Through Time , Jungles , Penguin , Living Planet , Eye to Eye , Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape , Okavango: Africa’s Last Eden , and Madagascar: A World Out of Time. Lanting is an Ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund and has received numerous awards for his work as a photographer and conservationist, including top honors from World Press Photo and the title of BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

Beryl Markham's West with the Night is a true classic, a book that deserves the same acclaim and readership as the work of her contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Isak Dinesen. Born Beryl Clutterbuck in the middle of England, she and her father moved to Kenya when she was a girl, and she grew up with a zebra for a pet; horses for friends; baboons, lions, and gazelles for neighbors. When Hemingway read Markham's book, he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins: "She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer . I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people's stories, are absolutely true . “ West with the Night is the sort of book that makes you think human beings can do anything .

Readers, as if on African safari, encounter eight wild animals that come alive using never-before-seen Photicular technology. Accompanying the images is Safari , the guide: It begins with an evocative journal of a safari along the Mara River in Kenya and interweaves the history of safaris. "Shots of cheetahs, rhinos, and gazelles spring to life as the pages turn." "Lenticular technology takes a big leap forward with this virtual safari." ( Entertainment Weekly ). “Shots of cheetahs, rhinos, and gazelles spring to life as the pages turn.”.

This new Bradt guide will be the first to focus on the renascent Algeria and bring out the many features of this beguiling North African country. Jonathan Oakes is based in Algeria, working for a chain of language schools throughout the country.

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Packed with photographs, illustrations, and maps. Cutaways and floor plans of all the major sights. 3D aerial views of the city's most interesting districts. Huge selection of hotels, restaurants, stores, and entertainment venues. About DK Eyewitness Travel Guides : For more than two decades, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have helped travelers experience the world through the history, art, architecture, and culture of their destinations.

It's no wonder that Cape Town is an award-winning city, and The Rough Guide to Cape Town, the Winelands, and the Garden Route uncovers it all. Reliable, readable Rough Guides * Conde Nast Traveller *.

Vladislavic, described as “one of the most imaginative minds at work in South African literature today” (André Brink), delivers “one of the best things ever written about a great, if schizophrenic, city, and an utterly true picture of the new South Africa” (Christopher Hope). In a post-apartheid world, the city of Johannesburg is a complicated place: racial divides still run deep, inextricably interwoven with crime and poverty, and endlessly complicated as the haves and have-nots negotiate new arrangements defined in terms of protection, invasion, and a tenuous level of common feeling.

With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that illuminate every page, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: South Africa truly shows you this country as no one else can. Series Overview: For more than two decades, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have helped travelers experience the world through the history, art, architecture, and culture of their destinations. With guidebooks to hundreds of places around the globe available in print and digital formats, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides show travelers how they can discover more. About DK Eyewitness Travel Guides : For more than two decades, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have helped travelers experience the world through the history, art, architecture, and culture of their destinations.

An emotionally charged, action–packed, utterly gripping read, The Race for Timbuktu offers a close, personal look at the extraordinary people and pivotal events of nineteenth–century African exploration that changed the course of history and the shape of the modern world. Kryza recreates the bold journeys through the unknown Africa of early 19th-century British explorers Alexander Gordon Laing and Hugh Clapperton, competing to find the fabled city of Timbuktu.

Deaf since a young age, Swiller spent his formative years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world, encouraged by his family to use lipreading and the strident approximations of hearing aids to blend in. Spending his days working in the health clinic with Augustine Jere, a chubby, world-weary chess aficionado and a steadfast friend, Swiller had finally found, he believed, a place where his deafness didn't interfere, a place he could call home. Swiller hears the rhythms of language and life far better than most people with two normal ears.” ― Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. This is not gimp chic, nor misery memoir, but a book as deserving, funny and brave as a deaf man digging wells in hardest Africa. “[Swiller's] appealing, intelligent narrative serves both as a coming of age story and as a penetrating light into one corner of a tormented continent.” ― Washington Post. “Josh Swiller rewrites the familiar African narrative with a purity that makes the tragic beauty of that devastated continent a stunning novelty for readers.

Fodor’s correspondents highlight the best of Africa, including Kenya's Masai Mara, South Africa's Kruger National Park, and Botswana's Kwando Reserve. Check out Fodor's travel guide to South Africa. “Fodor’s is pitched a few notches higher….aimed at a fairly discerning traveler with an appetite for background and the occasional surprise.” – New York Times.

A SONG OF AFRICA: and the Roots of Boko Haram Thrill and Learn Fortune seeking engineer, Paul Jeffries, out to make millions on a state of the art telecommunications project in Nigeria reluctantly agrees to reach out to the idealistic American ambassador’s daughter who has fled into the besieged rebel enclave of Biafra to help refugees there in the mid 1960’s. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + To understand how the terrorist group Boko Haram has risen in Nigeria in recent years, one must be familiar with the history of that troubled nation, home to every fourth person on the African Continent. For example, it is intriguing how in an article in the Wall Street Journal, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s mini bio of Abubakar Shekau, leader of the terrorist group Boko Haram, resembles the strategy of Uthman dan Fodio who led the first Jihad in Nigeria at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had on, or the children invent a new game in which my name was, or the full moon cast a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?” Isak Dinneson “Out of Africa” "This country is filled with foreign spies." Ronald Brian Wheatley depicts his setting as forcefully as his characters, from the idyllic plateau region Paul (Jeffries) calls home to the perilous mangrove infested tributaries in the South. Congratulations to Ron Wheatley for his independent presentation of a missionary perspective, affirming in advance that to which Benedict exhorts us - The message, the mystery, the value of human life, and the conditions in which it is lived."

Inspired by his journals, the book recounts his life as a Peace Corps teacher after a heartbreaking divorce and a demanding legal career prompted him to make a change. Modest without being demure, candid without being coy, Buckler draws readers into a journey of discovery, a commitment of soul, body, and mind to his task of helpfulness. Nine thousand miles and one year later, the 32-year-old lawyer begins to understand the depth of commitment demanded by his mission in Malawi and the truth of his initial assessment. Buckler's multicultural and transformative personal growth will keep readers' attention as he reports on how he learned the nuanced meanings of commitment, collaboration, and friendship in this exploration of self and place developed from journal entries. Buckler describes with keen powers of observation details of village life that capture the imagination as he sees beyond those boundaries to the larger global landscape. Verdict Inspiring and heartbreaking, Buckler's account of the endless obstacles encountered by his students and colleagues and their hope and persistence to succeed makes for compelling reading. Luckily, Mr. Zimbota, headmaster of the school where Buckler teaches, becomes an invaluable cultural ambassador, and three students the author calls 'The Boys' become his housemates, creating a tight-knit family. Aided by naïve idealism and the urge to help, Buckler takes on community projects, starting small, with a tree planting plan, and ending with the building of a boarding house for girls who had been travelling up to 10 miles to attend school. Buckler's poetic descriptions provide a colorful image of Malawian life, while never softening the sobering realities of poverty, malaria, and HIV.

Fodor’s correspondents highlight the best of Africa, including Kenya's Masai Mara, South Africa's Kruger National Park, and Botswana's Kwando Reserve. Check out Fodor's travel guide to South Africa. “Fodor’s is pitched a few notches higher….aimed at a fairly discerning traveler with an appetite for background and the occasional surprise.” – New York Times.

Marooned off the coast of Gabon, the volcanic islands of São Tomé & Príncipe are a largely undiscovered, uniquely rewarding and safe destination with an exciting blend of African, Portuguese and Caribbean cultures. · Observe endemic birds at Obô National Park. · Scramble up the Pico de São Tomé. · Check out the colonial architecture and cool culture. · of São Tomé city. · Lounge upon picturesque Banana Beach. · Taste single-estate chocolate from the ‘Cocoa Islands’. Lying just off the western coast of Africa, the diminutive islands of São Tomé and Príncipe remain unspoilt by mass tourism, making the former Portuguese colony the perfect place for adventure.

— Boston Globe Paul Theroux’s best-selling Dark Star Safari chronicled his epic overland voyage from Cairo to Cape Town, providing an insider’s look at modern Africa. Traveling alone, Theroux sets out from Cape Town, going north through South Africa, Namibia, then into Angola, encountering a world increasingly removed from tourists’ itineraries and the hopes of postcolonial independence movements. After covering nearly 2,500 arduous miles, he cuts short his journey, a decision he chronicles with unsparing honesty in a chapter titled “What Am I Doing Here?” Vivid, witty, and beautifully evocative, The Last Train to Zona Verde is a fitting final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers. *Starred Review* Having traveled overland from Cairo to Cape Town in Dark Star Safari (2003), Theroux intended, 10 years on, to resume the trip, this time heading north up the west side of Africa, avoiding the “safe and well-trodden routes.” Though he found some happy moments in “the kingdom of light,” the journey was to be darker, harder, and, a rarity for Theroux—unfinished. He does find hopeful change in Cape Town, beautiful desolation in Namibia, and elegance in the bush in Botswana (albeit at extortionate prices).

With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that illuminate every page, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: South Africa truly shows you this country as no one else can. Series Overview: For more than two decades, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have helped travelers experience the world through the history, art, architecture, and culture of their destinations. With guidebooks to hundreds of places around the globe available in print and digital formats, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides show travelers how they can discover more. About DK Eyewitness Travel Guides : For more than two decades, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have helped travelers experience the world through the history, art, architecture, and culture of their destinations.

NatGeo takes you on a photographic tour of the world’s most spectacular destinations, inspiring tangible ideas for your next trip. That early experience instilled in him a reverence for the classic, timeless feel of a wonderful photograph, a reverence that he continues to feel even with his job as Director of Photography for National Geographic Travel.

The Prophet’s Camel Bell is both a fascinating account of Somali culture and British colonial characters, and a lyrical description of life in the desert. Margaret Laurence (1926–1987) was a well-known Canadian author of short stories and novels, including The Stone Angel , A Jest of God , The Diviners , and The Fire Dwellers .

Routes covered on 35 detailed walking maps in the proven Trailblazer style; all walking times are indicated along with points of interest and gradients. ‘Stedman's wonderfully down-to-earth, practical guide to the mountain, with excellent tips on preparing for the trek and a roundup of routes to the top’. It covers everything, from city accommodations and restaurants nearby to what to see en route, then how to plan and book a trek to Kilimanjaro. ‘Stedman is something of a Kili obsessive...and that shows on every page of this fully revised and expanded edition of his guide...

A hilarious, highly original collection of essays based on the Botswana truism: “only food runs!” With a new introduction and new material from the author In the tradition of Bill Bryson, a new writer brings us the lively adventures and biting wit of an African safari guide. No one could make up these outrageous-but-true tales: the young woman who rejected the recommended safari-friendly khaki to wear a more “fashionable” hot pink ensemble; the lost tourist who happened to be drunk, half-naked, and a member of the British royal family; establishing a real friendship with the continent’s most vicious animal; the Japanese tourist who requested a repeat performance of Allison’s being charged by a lion so he could videotape it; and spending a crazy night in the wild after blowing a tire on a tour bus, revealing that Allison has as much good-natured scorn for himself. A hilarious chapter recounting a troubled thousand mile trek through the Kalahari Desert finds Allison trying to wave down a passing truck in the middle of the night: "I realized that the driver would have seen what looked like a very animated sage bush with pasty white hands growing from it... he'd probably go straight to a witch doctor... and ask if there was a curse on him."

With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that illuminate every page, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Morocco truly shows you this country as no one else can. With guidebooks to hundreds of places around the globe available in print and digital formats, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides show travelers how they can discover more. DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: the most maps, photographs, and illustrations of any guide. "Known… for its four-color maps, photos and illustrations, the [DK] Eyewitness Guides are extremely user-friendly for travelers who want their information delivered in a concise, visual way."

Fodor’s correspondents highlight the best of Africa, including Kenya's Masai Mara, South Africa's Kruger National Park, and Botswana's Kwando Reserve. Check out Fodor's travel guide to South Africa. “Fodor’s is pitched a few notches higher….aimed at a fairly discerning traveler with an appetite for background and the occasional surprise.” – New York Times.

From balafon players in the laidback town of Bobo-Dioulasso to masters of horsemanship further north―plus internationally recognized film, jazz, hip hop, and craft festivals―landlocked Burkina Faso, in the heart of West Africa, has something to offer everyone. Katrina Manson and James Knight are writers and photographers, both with extensive experience of living, working and travelling in Africa.

On assignment for Outside Magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas as a client of Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall's team was a guided expedition led by Scott Fischer, a forty-year-old American with legendary strength and drive who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people -- including himself -- to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall.

In 2001, Sharon Pincott traded her privileged life as a high-flying corporate executive to start a new one with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe. Elephant Dawn did that for me - an intense read, inspiring and moving... Over an incredible 13 years this tough-as-teak lady developed a valuable understanding of all 17 extended family groups that make up the greater 500-strong herd. '[Sharon Pincott] formed one of the most remarkable bonds ever with wild elephants. 'An inspirational book full of adventure and emotions, showing true courage and determination of an exceptional woman who lived 13 years with elephants in Zimbabwe facing daily the adversity that only her passion for these gentle giants could overcome.'. [Elephant Dawn] is full of... accounts of [Sharon Pincott's] deeply intimate bond with the elephant families... She has risked so much for elephants and it is a gift to us that we can now read this moving account of her thirteen years in Zimbabwe fighting to save a population of elephants she came to know intimately.'. Cynthia Moss, world-renowned Elephant Specialist, celebrated in BBC's Echo of the Elephants. '[ Elephant Dawn ] is hard hitting, and factual, a story that everyone should read... Memories of so many things that happened in Zimbabwe, with elephants, other wildlife, politics and day to day life, flooded back to me as I read... 'After 13 years living among 500 wild elephants, Pincott is telling her story in Elephant Dawn...The locals called Pincott Thandeka Mandlovu, which means 'much-loved Mother Elephant', and believed she had special magic... With more and more elephants being killed every year, perhaps magic is the only thing that can save them. I would say this is essential reading for anyone interested in wildlife conservation and especially elephants, but this book isn't just about that: it is essentially the story of a person, so committed that they are willing to give up nearly everything to follow their heart and stand up for what they believe in, no matter what. 'The story of one woman and her elephants...Sharon gave up her career in Australia in 2001 to travel to Zimbabwe to give her full attention to the conservation of the Presidential Herd in the Hwange Estate in western Zimbabwe. It was not a good time for Zimbabwe but the elephants needed her... For 13 years Sharon struggled against everything that a troubled Zimbabwe could throw at her...[Elephant Dawn is] a book that one should read, particularly now, when the elephants of Zimbabwe are so much in the news.'. '...a good read with high points, sadness and gritty determination... We need more Sharon Pincotts' to fight for nature from global warming to elephants, they are all connected.'. John Asquith, 50 years in natural resource management, environmental advocacy and wildlife habitat conservation, Australia. '[Sharon Pincott] has done this [elephant work] as a labour of love, unfunded and alone, in a less than friendly country where white people are easily dispensable, certainly according to Robert Mugabe ...

Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom. Rodriguez went to Afghanistan in 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban, volunteering as a nurse's aide, but soon found that her skills as a trained hairdresser were far more in demand, both for the Western workers and, as word got out, Afghans. Rodriguez was entranced with the delightful personalities that emerged when her students removed their burqas behind closed doors, but her book is also a tale of empowerment–both for her and the women. Rodriguez's experiences will delight readers as she recounts such tales as two friends acting as parents and negotiating a dowry for her marriage to an Afghan man or her students puzzling over a donation of a carton of thongs. Most of all, they will share her admiration for Afghan women's survival and triumph in chaotic times.– Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Now an instant #1 New York Times bestseller, Humans of New York began in the summer of 2010, when photographer Brandon Stanton set out to create a photographic census of New York City. The Top 5 Humans of New York Brandon Stanton's thousands of not-quite-candid street portraits of New Yorkers (and accompanying captions, usually from the subjects themselves) have made his Humans of New York blog both poignant and extremely popular--as well as garnering him recognition as one of Time magazine's "30 People Under 30 Changing the World." This book of the same title collects 400 of his best portraits, telling small stories that are outsized in their humor, candor, and humanity. Normally I'm a bit downtrodden if I'm unable to interview a subject, but I thought her 'brush-off' was the perfect complement to the photo. I found these kids in the Lower East Side, making the most of a hot summer day. But his shyness ended up coming through beautifully, creating a portrait of the relationship between mother and son.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Introduction by Caryl Phillips. Commentary by H. L. Mencken, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chinua Achebe, and Philip Gourevitch. Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century’s most enduring works of fiction. Mencken, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chiua Achebe, and Philip Gourevitch. "Heart of Darkness," which appeared at the very beginning of our century, was a Cassandra cry announcing the end of Victorian Europe, on the verge of transforming itself into the Europe of violence," wrote the critic Czeslaw Milosz. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad, "His books are full of moments of vision.

A New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection. A Booklist Editors’ Choice Title for 2017. “If many Americans imagine slavery essentially as a system in which black men toiled on cotton plantations, Miles upends that stereotype several times over.”. — New York Times Book Review. The result is fascinating history, little explored and eloquently told, of the limits of freedom in early America, one that adds new layers of complexity to the story of a place that exerts a strong fascination in the media and among public intellectuals, artists, and activists. “Historian Miles ( Tales from the Haunted South ) has written a book that will reorient the focus of early slavery in North America Westward to include Detroit as central to any understanding of the tangled relations of French, English, Euro-Americans, Indians, and Africans on the frontier from the 18th to early 19th century. “In this exemplary history that shows how slavery made early Detroit, Professor Tiya Miles demonstrates that Malcolm X (whose activist father was lynched in Michigan) was right when he insisted that all of the United States is south of the Mason-Dixon Line. There is no finer writer among historians than Tiya Miles.”. — Edward Baptist, professor, department of history, Cornell University, and author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. “Extracting seemingly lost lives from sparse records to recover the humanity of people regarded as property, Tiya Miles exposes the tenacity of slavery and forced labor, both black and Indian, in multiethnic and multicultural Detroit during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. “The Dawn of Detroit once again demonstrates that Tiya Miles is the rarest sort of historian: a brilliant and humane observer who can build an account of the terrifying difference of the past out of a series of observations that have the plain familiarity of family history.”. — Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History, Harvard University, and author of Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Praise for Tiya Miles: “[Tiya Miles] has reframed and reinterpreted the history of our diverse nation.” —The MacArthur Foundation.