Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, won its independence from Great Britain in 1980 yet continues to feel the impact of Western lifestyles and prejudices. This rich, accessible overview freshly examines Zimbabwe, evoking the contemporary ways of life in a largely homogenous and agricultural country.

Students and general readers will discover an engaging narrative that ranges from an explanation of the beer culture to a powerful discussion of marriage, family, and gender roles from the Zimbabwean perspective. Owomoyela also authoritatively conveys the coexistence of traditional and Western forces today in such areas as religion and music. A chronology and glossary accompany the text.

In 1994, Immaculee Ilibagiza watched in horror as the forces of hatred plunged her beloved African homeland of Rwanda into three months of genocidal butchery in which more than a million innocent men, women, and children--including her own family--were brutally slaughtered.Immaculee's first two Rwandan memoirs, the international bestseller, "Left to Tell;" and the highly acclaimed sequel, "Led By Faith, "chronicle her miraculous survival and remarkable ability to triumph over darkness and despair by embracing the power of God's love and forgiveness to rid her heart of hatred.
Now, in "Sowing The Seeds of Forgiveness," Immaculee reveals how the simple message of forgiveness in her earlier books resonated in the hearts of readers around the world. The hunger to find inner peace is so universal that Immaculee now spends much of her life sharing her story in churches, synagogues, concert halls, and stadiums all over the globe. Along the way she offers us moments of true inspiration by taking us into the lives of people whose hearts have been freed from a lifetime of pain by finding forgiveness.In this book, we join Immaculee as she travels from Iceland to Japan, from Hollywood to the Holy Land, to the White House luncheon and a meeting with the first family, and much more. In each country, no matter what the culture or language, Immaculee is greeted with the same question: "How do we forgive?" Her answer is always the same, and it is what "Sowing The Seeds of Forgiveness" is truly about--"Love."

Colonel Gadaffi's Hat is both a gripping and deeply moving account of the Libyan uprising from the lone journalist who was able to report from the rebel army convoy that captured Green Square, in the heart of Tripoli. Alex Crawford's daring reports were beamed across news networks from around the globe, and against a dramatic backdrop of celebratory gunfire, Alex and her team showed the world the final symbolic moments of the fall of a regime that had held power for more than 40 years. The euphoria and chaos of that atmosphere of jubilation was soon overcome by the realities of conflict, and the story of the following days that Alex so viscerally tells in this remarkable account is an eye-opening journey full of human stories that are both shocking and touching. A portrait of the last gasps of Gaddafi's regime, Crawford's book is an extraordinary insight into modern political conflict and the nature of journalism. The first journalist to be on the scene at a number of key points in the Libyan conflict, Alex has been arrested, shot at, tear gassed and interrogated in the course of her career, and paints a fascinating picture of war journalism. A heart-stopping ride through a dramatic moment in modern history, Colonel Gadaffi's Hat is a window into both the craft of journalism and the amazing story of Libya's road to Freedom.

Nelson Mandela, the first African politician to acquire a world following, remains in the 21st century an iconic figure. But what are the sources of his almost mythic appeal? And to what extent did Mandela self-consciously create the status of political hero that he now enjoys? This new and highly revealing biography examines these questions in detail for the first time. Drawing on a range of original sources, it presents a host of fresh insights about the shaping of Mandela's personality and public persona, from his childhood days and early activism, through his long years of imprisonment, to his presidency of the new South Africa. Throughout, Lodge emphasizes the crucial interplay between Mandela's public career and his personal or private world, showing how his heroic status was a product both of his leading position within the anti-apartheid movement and his own deliberate efforts to supply a form of quasi-messianic leadership for that movement. And as Lodge shows, Mandela's huge international appeal is a compelling and unusual cocktail. Of the sacred and the secular. Of traditional African values and global media savvy. And of human vulnerablilty interwoven with the grand narrrative of liberation throughout the story of this exceptional life.

In this account of the Algerian War's effect on French political structures and notions of national identity, Todd Shepard asserts that the separation of Algeria from France was truly a revolutionary event with lasting consequences for French social and political life.

Gavin Evans became obsessed with boxing at the age of six. Infatuated with the likes of Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis, Gavin devoured everything he could find on the sport and determined to become the heavyweight champion of the world, in spite of being the smallest kid in the class. After a less than wildly successful junior career, Gavin resigned himself to the role of spectator rather than participator in the sport he loved, becoming a journalist, often with a ringside seat. But, growing up in South Africa, it was politics that filled the void, becoming Gavin's new Goliath, and it was politics into which he poured his energy and his pent-up frustrations.

Recruited in the ANC underground, Gavin's active role in the struggle against apartheid would frequently place him in far greater danger than he had ever faced in the ring. Detentions, assaults, five-am meetings, spy-catching, murder attempts, all these became a part of Gavin Evans' new world. A memoir of twin passions, boxing and politics, set against the backdrop of South Africa under apartheid, this work is a vivid, incisive and poignant portrait of two disparate yet strangely connected worlds, and of the characters, brave, brutal and often bizarre, who inhabit them both.

Although Libya and its leader have been the subject of numerous accounts, few have considered how the country's tumultuous history, its institutional development and its emergence as an oil economy combined to create a state whose rulers ignored the notion of modern statehood. International isolation and a legacy of internal turmoil have destroyed or left undocumented much of what researchers might seek to examine. Dirk Vandewalle supplies a detailed analysis of Libya's political and economic development since the country's independence in 1951, basing his account on fieldwork in Libya, archival research in Tripoli and personal interviews with some of the country's top policymakers.

Scott Straus steps back from the particulars of the Rwandan genocide to offer a dynamic model for understanding other instances of genocide in history - the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, the Balkans - and assessing the future likelihood of such events.

Five out of six Tutsis were hacked to death with machetes and spears by their Hutu neighbours. In the villages of Nyamata and N'tarama, where, in the first two days of the genocide, over 10,000 Tutsis were massacred in the churches where they sought refuge, Jean Hatzfeld interviewed some of the survivors. Of all ages, coming from different walks of life, from orphan teenage farmers to the local social worker, fourteen survivors talk of the genocide, the death of family and friends in the church and in the marshes of Bugesera to which they fled. They also talk of their present life and try to explain and understand the reasons behind the extermination. These horrific accounts of life at the very edge contrast with Hatzfeld's own sensitive and vivid descriptions of Rwanda's villages and countryside in peacetime. Into the quick of life brings us, in the author's own words, as close to the event as we can ever get.