Cape Town is two cities.

One is beautiful beyond imagining, known since its beginning as the 'fairest cape' in the world. Here tourists come to lounge on beaches, scale misty peaks and dine in fine restaurants. The other is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where police need bullet-proof vests and sometimes army backup. Here gangs of young men rule the night with heavy calibre handguns, dispensing heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and fear. This is a story of the second city...

In Gang Town, investigative journalist and criminologist Don Pinnock draws on more than thirty years of research to provide a nuanced and definitive portrait of youngsters caught up in violent crime.

Most people think of Antarctica as a white smudge at the bottom of the world map. Yet it’s a landmass almost half the size of Africa with weather and ocean currents that dominate the planet.

In Blue Ice, award-winning travel writer Don Pinnock journeys to the seventh continent – the last to be discovered. He explores what drew Cook, Bellingshousen, Shackleton, Scott and other adventurers and naturalists to this vast terrain

With sensitive descriptions and startling photography, he travels to the heart of Antarctica’s wilderness and explores the intimate relationship between Cape Town and the frozen south.

This is an extravagant travelogue, which paints a vivid portrait of one of the most remote and unforgiving places on earth. It reveals the extremes of adventure, courage and unspoilt beauty with precision, humour and a sense of wonder.

One of South Africa’s most accomplished travel writers takes you on a series of journeys through Africa – following the footsteps of David Livingstone, wandering the back streets of old Stone Town in Zanzibar, crossing the central Sahara, puzzling over the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia.

He hikes over lost mountains, motorcycles along the 29th parallel, canoes clear across the Okavango Delta and explores the secrets of Knysna Forest.

His descriptions show a sharp eye for detail, a fascinating knowledge of the continent’s history and, above all, a deep love of the warm people and strange creatures of Africa.

Are clouds alive? Where is Africa’s most dangerous river? Are there really elephants in the Knysna Forest? Why do female hyenas sometimes grow a penis? Why did Zulu warriors never ride into battle mounted on zebras?

These are some of the quirky questions which award-winning journalist and naturalist Don Pinnock seeks to answer as he wanders around Africa.

Love Letters To Africa is a blend of geography, history, natural science and travel writing, of personal meditation and general philosophy. For exploring Africa at ground level, you couldn’t find a better guide.

Using gang rituals to tackle gang problems may not be as crazy as it sounds - it could be the only way to head off disaster.

When gangs control the drug trade, corner the pimp market, corrupt the police and even run the city's tough housing manager out of town it's fair to say that Cape Town has a major problem. But in the thousands of words being written about gangs in the near-hysterical daily press an important dynamic is being completely overlooked: as social institutions gangs work extremely well.

They serve a purpose way beyond the strong-arm needs of gang and syndicate bosses. If they didn't the kids on the corners wouldn't join them, let alone fight - sometimes to the death - for the territory they claim.

In 1982 Ruth First was killed in Mozambique when she opened a parcel bomb sent to her by a South African hit squad. This was the tragic end to a life spent fighting racism.

Ruth was a powerful public speaker and one of the best journalists South Africa has ever had: always probing, questioning and exposing the brutality of apartheid for the world to see.

In this book we get to know the surprisingly shy Ruth - as a student and a teacher, a writer and an underground fighter, a socialist and an activist, a feminist and a mother. Ruth helped change the course of South African history and inspired many to join the struggle against apartheid.

This six-volume Voices of Liberation series book set is a celebration of lives and writings of South African and African liberation activists and heroes. Each book provides human, social and literary contexts of the subject, with critical resonance to where we come from, who we are, as a nation, and how we can choose to shape our destiny. This series invites the contemporary reader to ensure that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost, by providing access to their thoughts and writings, and engaging directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy, to discover where we come from and to explore how we, too, can choose our destiny. Books in this set are: Voices of Liberation: Albert Luthuli by Gerald Pillay. Albert Luthuli was a teacher, activist, a lay preacher, and a politician. He was the president of the African National Congress from 1952 until his accidental death. Voices of Liberation: Ruth First by Don Pinnock. Ruth First was an anti-apartheid South African activist and a scholar. She was killed by a parcel bomb addressed specifically to her in Mozambique, where she in exile from South Africa. Voices of Liberation: Patrice Lumumba by Leo Zeilig. Patrice Lumumba was a Congolese politician and independence leader, who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of Congo, after Congo was liberated into an independent republic from Belgium. Voices of Liberation: Chris Hani by Greg Houston & James Ngculu. Chris Hani was the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of Umkhonto weSizwe. He was a fierce opponent of the apartheid government, and was assassinated on 10 April 1993. Voices of Liberation: Frantz Fanon by Leo Zeilig. Frantz Fanon was an activist, philosopher, and psychiatrist whose work shaped the late 20th century critical anthropology in Europe and North America. Voices of Liberation: Steve Biko by Derek Hook. Steve Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s.

South Africa is a place of wonder, intrigue and glorious color. In search of the soul of a newly awakening land, Gerald Hoberman has photographed an ancient sacrifical ceremony of the Xhosa, captured the lifestyle of Bushmen living close to the land, and shared mampoer, a homemade brew, with farmers in the Groot Marica district. With South Africa, Gerald Hoberman has captured a beautiful country and its people in a time of excitement and transformation, while retaining an eye for that which does not change; old places and ancient customs upon which time seems to have no grasp. This splendid volume is a must for all those with an interest in this remarkable country on the southern tip of Africa.

There really is a woman who lived in a tree - for sixteen years. A leopard occasionally shared it with her, lions stalked underneath and there were crocs in the river where she fetched her water. There's also a man who flew clean around the world in a microlight powered by a lawnmower engine. And a woman who single-handedly hauled a sled to the South Pole. Then there's the guy who's best friends are ragged-tooth sharks, someone who planted more than a million trees and a man who hunts monsters in a forest. The question is: why do they do these things? At least part of the answer, I think, is that modern society has perfected the art of having nothing happen at all. There's not anything particularly wrong with this except, for large numbers of people, if life has become easy it has also become vaguely unfulfilling. Civilisation is about eliminating as many unforeseen events as possible. But, as inviting as that seems, it leaves us hopelessly underutilised. That's where the idea of adventure comes in. The word comes from the Latin adventura, meaning 'what must happen.' An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely under your control. Its outcome is up to fate. Soldiers at war, policemen patrolling tough precincts or sailors on a tramp steamer surviving a storm aren't having adventures. Their normal lives are unpredictable enough. Adventurers, it seems to me, are people who could have chosen a safer trajectory or a passion less demanding, but didn't. As a travel writer and photographer I've had a few unpredictable moments - charged by an enraged hippo, looking up and seeing a leopard on the branch above staring down at potential dinner, arrested by stoned youngsters with AK47s. Those sorts of things are bound to happen in Africa at some time or another. But, more interestingly, in my travels I've met some really spectacular adventurers, the sort of people that make you look back at your life and think of all the things you could have done. Over more than a decade of writing about them I realised that their stories needed a more permanent home than in a fleeting magazine article. Jacana publisher Janet Bartlet agreed and Getaway magazine didn't mind me ransacking its archives. So here are some of Africa's more obscure, generally brave and decidedly colourful sons and daughters. The sort of people who made something happen." Don Pinnock, Cape Town, January 2009.

The struggle to free South Africa from its apartheid shackles was long and complex. One of the many ways in which the apartheid regime maintained its stranglehold in South Africa was through controlling the freedom of speech and the flow of information, in an effort to silence the voices of those who opposed it. United by the ideals of freedom and equality, but also nuanced by a wide variety of persuasions, the 'voices of liberation' were many: African nationalists, communists, trade-unionists, pan-Africanists, English liberals, human rights activists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to name but a few. The Voices of Liberation series ensures that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost. The series offers a unique combination of biographical information with selections from original speeches and writings in each volume. By providing access to the thoughts and writings of some of the many men and women who fought for the dismantling of apartheid, this series invites the contemporary reader to engage directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy. This volume presents a brief biography of Ruth First, followed by a selection of her writings as a political activist, scholar and journalist. The book presents a timeline summary of significant events in Ruth's life within the context of major socio-political events of the time. It concludes with a reflection on her legacy from a current perspective and offers a further reading list.