Bibliography / Book List: Africa: General

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ART, CULTURE, MUSIC & RELIGION

Amadiume, Ifi, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. Zed Pr, 1987.

Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu, Breast of the Earth. Anchor, 1975.

Balandier, G., Ambiguous Africa. Meridian, 1966.

Balandier & Jacques P. Maquet, Dictionary of Black African Civilization. Leon Amiel, 1974.

Bascom, William R., African Art In Cultural Perspective. W W Norton, 1973.

Bastian, Misty L. and Parpart, Jane L., (ed.)  Great Ideas for Teaching about Africa. Lynne Rienner Pub, 1999.

Bebey, Francis, African Music: A People's Art. Lawrence Hill & Co., 1975.

Bloch, Marianne N, Beoku-Betts, Josephine A. and Tabachnick, B. Robert, (editors)   Women and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Power, Opportunity, and Constraints. Lynne Rienner Pub, 1998.

Bohannan, Paul and Philip Curtin, Africa and Africans. Waveland Press, 1995.

Duley, Margot & Edwards, Mary, (ed.) The Cross-Cultural Study of Women. Feminist, 1986.

Elisofon, Eliot & Fagg, William, Sculpture of Africa. Praeger, 1958.

Graham, Ronnie, Da Capo Guide to Contemporary African Music. Da Capo Pr, 1988.

Harley, G.W., Native African Medicine with Special Reference to Its Practice in the Mano Tribe of Liberia. Cass, 1941.

Maier, Karl, Into the House of the Ancestors: Inside the New Africa. New York: John Wiley & Sons, January 1998. 278 pp. Exceptional among books by Western journalists. Without avoiding the horrors and problems--from genocide in Rwanda to child soldiers to AIDS--Maier stresses the initiative and determination of rarely acknowledged individuals finding the way ahead one step at a time. Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Mozambique, Mali, Angola, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Congo (Kinshasa).

Maquet, Jacques, Africanity. Oxford, 1972.

Maranz, David, African Friends and Money Matters. SIL International, 2001. Clearly lays out the differences between how Westerners and Africans view and value money, things and friends.  A valuable book for both Westerners and Africans needing to decode the other groups behavior.

Mbele, Joseph, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences. Lulu, 2005.

Mbiti, John, African Religions and Philosophy. Heinemann, 1992.

Murray, Jocelyn, (ed.) Cultural Atlas of Africa. Facts on File, 1998.

Paulme, Denise, Women of Tropical Africa. Routledge, 2004.

Parrinder, G., Religion In Africa. Penguin, 1969.

Shell-Duncan, B. & Y. Hernlund, Female "Circumcision" in Africa: Culture, Controversy and Change. Lynne Rienner Pub., 2000.

Somé, Malidoma Patrice, Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, Tarcher / Putnam, 1994.

Somé, Malidoma Patrice, Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose through Nature, Ritual and Community. Tarcher / Putnam, 1998. An excellent description of the relationship of the Dagara People (West Africa) with This World and the Other World and a thorough comparison with Dagara culture and Western culture.

Tempels, P., Bantu Philosophy. Presence Africaine, 1959. A classic on indigenous religion in Central Africa.

Williams, Geoffrey, African Designs from Traditional Sources. Dover, 1989.

Willett, Frank, African Art: An Introduction (World of Art). Thames & Hudson, 1993.

HISTORY, ECONOMICS & DEVELOPMENT

Adeleye-Fayemi, Bisi and Algresia Akwi-Ogajor, editors. Taking the African Women's Movement into the 21st Century: Report of the First African Women's Leadership Institute, February 22nd to March 14th, 1997, Kampala, Uganda. London: Akina Mama wa Afrika, June 1997. Available from Africa Books Centre, London.

Alagiah, George,  Passage to Africa. London: Time Warner, 2001. 292 pp.

Berkeley, Bill, The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa. New York: Basic Books, 2001. 309 pp. Liberia, Congo (Kinshasa), South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda.

Beswick, Stephanie and Jay Spaulding, eds., African Systems of Slavery.  Africa World Press, 2010.

Boserup, Ester, Women's Role in Economic Development. St. Martin's, 1970.

Carlsson, Jerker, Gloria Somolekae and Nicolas van de Walle, Foreign Aid in Africa: Learning from Country Experiences. Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1997. (PDF)

Chambers, Robert, Rural Development - Putting the Last First. Addison Wesley Longman, 1990.

Corbett, E., The French Presence In Black Africa. Black Orpheus, 1972.

Davidson, Basil, Africa In History. Macmillan, 1968.

Davidson, Basil, The Lost Cities of Africa. Little, Brown &Company,1972

Davidson, Basil, Search for Africa: History, Culture, Politics. New York: Times Books, 1995.

Davison, Jean, Agriculture, Women & Land. Westview Pr, 1988.

Fanon, Frantz; books by Frantz Fanon on Africa include: Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, and Towards an African Revolution.

French, Howard, Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa Vintage, 2004.  Goes beyond the stereotypes of Africa.

Freund, Bill, The Making of Contemporary Africa: The Development of African Society Since 1800. Lynne Rienner Pub, 1998.

Hancock, Graham, Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business. Grove Atlantic, 1991.

Hodgkin, Thomas, Nationalism in Colonial Africa. NewYork Univ. Press, 1957. A classic in African political science.

Hulme, David and Michael Edwards (ed.), NGOs, States and Donors: Too Close for Comfort. St. Martins Press, 1996.

Iliffe, John, Africans: The History of a Continent. Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1995.

Mamdani, Mahmood, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History). Princeton Univ. Press, May 1996.

Maren, Michael, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity. Free Press, 1996.  Makes the argument that the aid system as it now exists empowers dictators and the other institutions that are the reasons for Africa's economic problems to begin with.

Meredith, Martin, The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair. PublicAffairs, 2005. Examines the first fifty years of independence for African countries.

Miers, Suzanne and Igor Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa. 1977.  Seminal collection.

Morel, Edmund Dene, Black Man's Burden: The White Man in Africa from the Fifteenth Century to World War One. Associated Faculty Press, 1973.  Grim history of King Leopold's Congo. A classic of  decolonization first published in 1920.

Moyo, Dambisa, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is Another Way For Africa. Penguin, 2010.  Moyo looks at why aid to Africa fails and how other parts of the world have developed without it, and prescribes how Africa will do better weaned from aid. She doesn't quite detail how Africa will eliminate the scourge of corruption.

Oliver, Roland A. & Fage, J.D., Short History of Africa. Penguin, 1962.

Reader, John, Africa: A Biography of the Continent. Penguin Books, 1998.

Redclift, Michael, Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions. Methuen Inc., 1988.

Sandbrook, Richard, The Politics Of Africa's Economic Stagnation. Cambridge, 1985.

Sutherland, Bill and Matt Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-Africanist Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation. Africa World Press, 2000.

Wamba, Philippe, Kinship: A Family's Journey in Africa and America. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999.384 pp.

POLITICS & PHILOSOPHY

Asante, Molefi Kete, Afrocentricity. Africa World Pr, 1988.

Birmingham, David, Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism. Ohio Univ. Press, 1998.

Diawara, Manthia, In Search of Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 288 pp.

Diawara, Manthia, We Won't Budge. New York: Basic Civitas, 2003. 288 pp.

Dumont, Rene, False Start In Africa. Sphere, 1966.

Liebenow, J. Gus, African Politics: Crises and Challenges. Indiana Univ., 1986. (Politics since independence.)

Monga, Celestin, The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa. Lynne Rienner Pub, 1998.

Minogue, Martin and Molly, J., African Aims and Attitudes: Selected Documents. Cambridge, 1974.

Mudimbe, V.Y., The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Indiana Univ., 1988.

Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom And Unity. Oxford Univ., 1968.

Padmore, George, Pan-Africanism Or Communism. Doubleday, 1971.

Roe, Emery, Except-Africa: Remaking Development, Rethinking Power. Transaction, 1998.

Senghor, Leopold S., On African Socialism. Praeger, 1961.

MODERN LITERATURE

Bruner, Charlotte H., (ed.)  Unwinding Threads: Writing by African Women. Heinemann, 1983. (Short stories)

Conton, William, The African. Heinemann, 1960. (Central elements of the story include a West African man, a white South African woman and Pan-Africanism.)

Davies, Carole B. and Graves, Anne Adams, Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Africa World Pr, 1986.

Hay, J., ed., African Novels in the Classroom. Lynne Rienner Pub., 2000.

Maillu, David G., Broken Drum. Nairobi, Kenya: Jomo Kenyatta Foundation and Maillu Publishing House, 1991. ISBN: 9966862137.

Mphahlele, Ezekiel, Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays. Hill & Wang, 1972.

Shelton, Austin J., African Assertion: A Critical Anthology of African Literature. Odyssey, 1968. (Anthology of African Literature)

FOLKLORE AND PARABLE COLLECTIONS

Achebe, Chinua and Innes, C.L., (ed.) African Short Stories. Heinemann, 1985.

Beier, Ulli, (ed.) Origin of Life and Death. Heinemann, 1966.

Dorson, R.M., (ed.) African Folklore. Anchor, 1972.

Ogutu, Gilbert E. & Roscoe, John, (ed.) Keep My Words. Heinemann, 1974.

p’Bitek, O., Hare and the Hornbill. Heinemann, 1978.

Smith, A.M., Children of Wax: African Folk Tales. Interlink, 1986.

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