Africa Audiobooks | History

The Phantom Major: The Story of David Stirling and His Desert Command

In the dark and uncertain days of 1941 and 1942, when Rommel's tanks were sweeping toward Suez, a handful of daring raiders were making history for the Allies. They operated deep behind the German lines, often driving hundreds of miles through the deserts of North Africa. They hid by day and struck by night, destroying aircraft, blowing up ammunition dumps, derailing trains, and killing many times their own number. These were the SAS—Stirling's desert raiders, the brainchild of a deceptively mild-mannered man with a brilliant idea. Small teams of resourceful, highly trained men would penetrate beyond the front lines of the opposing armies and wreak havoc where the Germans least expected it. The Phantom Major is the classic account of these desert raids, an amazing tale of courage, impudence, and daring, packed with action and high adventure. An intimate record based on eyewitness accounts, this book still stands as the definitive history of the early years of the SAS.

Virginia Cowles (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

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A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa

In 1652 a small group of Dutch farmers landed on the southernmost tip of Africa. Sent by the powerful Dutch India Company, their mission was simply to grow vegetables and supply ships rounding the cape. The colonists, however, were convinced by their strict Calvinist faith that they were among God's "Elect," chosen to rule over the continent. Their saga—bloody, ferocious, and fervent—would culminate three centuries later in one of the greatest tragedies of history: the establishment of a racist regime in which a white minority would subjugate and victimize millions of blacks. Called apartheid, it was a poisonous system that would only end with the liberation from prison of one of the moral giants of our time, Nelson Mandela. A Rainbow in the Night is Dominique Lapierre's epic account of South Africa's tragic history and the heroic men and women—famous and obscure, white and black, European and African—who have, with their blood and tears, brought to life the country that is today known as the Rainbow Nation. "Dominique Lapierre raises the curtain on the history of South Africa. Three and a half centuries…a sublime epic full of terrible dramas." —Le Point magazine, France Translated by Kathryn Spink

Dominique Lapierre (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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As We Forgive

Inspired by the award-winning film of the same name. If you were told that a murderer was to be released into your neighborhood, how would you feel? But what if it weren't only one, but thousands? Could there be a common roadmap to reconciliation? Could there be a shared future after unthinkable evil? If forgiveness is possible after the slaughter of nearly a million in a hundred days in Rwanda, then today, more than ever, we owe it to humanity to explore how one country is addressing perceptual, social-psychological, and spiritual dimensions to achieve a more lasting peace. If forgiveness is possible after genocide, then perhaps there is hope for the comparably smaller rifts that plague our relationships, our communities, and our nation. Based on personal interviews and thorough research, As We Forgive returns to the boundary lines of genocide's wounds and traces the route of reconciliation in the lives of Rwandans---victims, widows, orphans, and perpetrators---whose past and future intersect. We find in these stories how suffering, memory, and identity set up roadblocks to forgiveness, while mediation, truth-telling, restitution, and interdependence create bridges to healing. As We Forgive explores the pain, the mystery, and the hope through seven compelling stories of those who have made this journey toward reconciliation. The result is a narrative that breathes with humanity and is as haunting as it is hopeful.

Bahni Turnpin, Catherine Claire Larson (Author), Bahni Turnpin, Bahni Turpin, Catherine Claire Larson (Narrator)

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Strength in What Remains

Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative." In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man's remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him-a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances. Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness. An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.

Tracy Kidder (Author), Tracy Kidder (Narrator)

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The Challenge For Africa

Nobel Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai has campaigned for environmental activism in Africa for more than three decades. In The Challenge for Africa, Maathai delivers an insightful call to action, presenting a realistic look at the diverse problems facing Africans. Maathai's ability to dissect cultural problems and pose solutions individuals can follow has made her one of the most respected women in Africa today.

Wangari Maathai (Author), Chinasa Ogbuagu (Narrator)

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Ivory's Ghosts

Long before gold and gemstones held allure, humans were drawn to the "jewels of the elephant" - its great tusks. Ivory is a supreme organic treasure, prized throughout the world for its pale, lustrous beauty and ability to be finely carved. In Ivory's Ghosts, John Frederick Walker layers rich history and firsthand reportage to tell the fascinating and sometimes savage story of ivory's enormous impact on both human history and that of its most important source: the majestic African elephant. Coveted since prehistory, ivory was the master carver's medium in cultures from ancient Egypt to the industrializing United States. It was used for sacred amulets, classical nudes, intricate Baroque sculptures, Japanese netsuke, piano keys, and billiard balls. By the nineteenth century ivory had become the plastic of its age, and a global addiction drove the exploration and exploitation of Africa at immense human and animal cost. Insatiable demand led to the wholesale slaughter of elephants. By the 1980s, organized poaching reached record levels in East Africa, provoking an international outcry that led to an ivory trade ban still in effect today. Yet the ban has failed to stop poaching - or end the bitter, emotional debate over what to do with the legitimate and growing stockpiles of ivory from elephants that die of natural causes. In Ivory's Ghosts, John Frederick Walker builds a wrenching - and utterly compelling - argument that it is time to ask whether a controlled return to the ivory trade could help, rather than hurt, elephants. A richly detailed account of the troubled relationship between material desire and environmental welfare, Ivory's Ghosts is a deeply felt examination of both ivory's past and its uncertain future - and the future of elephants themselves.

John Frederick Walker (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

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Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation

Beginning in a jail cell and ending in a rugby tournament-the true story of how the most inspiring charm offensive in history brought South Africa together. After being released from prison and winning South Africa's first free election, Nelson Mandela presided over a country still deeply divided by fifty years of apartheid. His plan was ambitious if not far-fetched: use the national rugby team, the Springboks-long an embodiment of white-supremacist rule-to embody and engage a new South Africa as they prepared to host the 1995 World Cup. The string of wins that followed not only defied the odds, but capped Mandela's miraculous effort to bring South Africans together again in a hard-won, enduring bond.

John Carlin (Author), Gideon Emery (Narrator)

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A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It

Stephen Kinzer (Author), J. Paul Boehmer, Paul Boehmer (Narrator)

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Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt

Barbara Mertz (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict, and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and state torture. At the time, this brutal, intractable conflict seemed like a French affair. But from the perspective of half a century, it looks less like the last colonial war than the first postmodern one: a full-dress rehearsal for the amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, struggles in which religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism assume unparalleled degrees of intensity. “[This] universally acclaimed history...should have been mandatory reading for the civilian and military leaders who opted to invade Iraq.”—Washington Times

Alistair Horne (Author), James Adams (Narrator)

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Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt

Barbara Mertz (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

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The Slave Ship: A Human History

For more than three centuries, slave ships carried millions of people from the coasts of Africa to the New World. In The Slave Ship, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker creates an unprecedented history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on their rolling decks. Rediker restores the slave ship to its rightful place alongside the plantation as a formative institution of slavery, as a place where a profound and still haunting history of race, class, and modern capitalism was made. For more than three centuries, slave ships carried millions of people from the coasts of Africa across the Atlantic to the New World. Much is known of the slave trade and the American plantation complex, but little of the ships that made it all possible. In The Slave Ship, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker draws on thirty years of research in maritime archives to create an unprecedented history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on their rolling decks. He reconstructs in chilling detail the lives, deaths, and terrors of captains, sailors, and the enslaved aboard a "floating dungeon" trailed by sharks. From the young African kidnapped from his village and sold to the slavers by a neighboring tribe, to the would-be priest who takes a job as a sailor on a slave ship only to be horrified by the evil he sees, to the captain who relishes having "a hell of my own," Rediker illuminates the lives of people who were thought to have left no trace. This is a tale of tragedy and terror, but also an epic of resilience, survival, and the creation of something entirely new, something that could only be called African American. Rediker restores the slave ship to its rightful place alongside the plantation as a formative institution of slavery, as a place where a profound and still haunting history of race, class, and modern capitalism was made.

Marcus Rediker (Author), David Drummond (Narrator)

Audiobook

Africa Audiobooks in History