Africa Audiobooks | Travel

Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War; A Memoir

Leymah Gbowee was one of three women to receive the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize As a young woman growing up in Africa, seventeen-year-old Leymah Gbowee was crushed by a savage war when violence reached her native Monrovia, depriving her of the education she yearned for and claiming the lives of relatives and friends. As war continued to ravage Liberia, Gbowee's bitterness turned to rage-fueled action as she realized that women bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts. Passionate and charismatic, Gbowee was instrumental in galvanizing hundreds, if not thousands of women in Liberia in 2002 to force a peace in the region after twelve years of war. She began organizing Christian and Muslim women to demonstrate together, founding Liberian Mass Action for Peace, launching protests and even a sex strike. Gbowee's memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, chronicles the unthinkable violence she's faced throughout her life and the peace she has helped broker by empowering hundreds of her countrywomen and others around the world to take action and takes listeners along on her continuing journey as she harnesses the power of women to bring her country peace, saves herself, and changes history.

Leymah Gbowee (Author), Kimberly Scott (Narrator)

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Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account.

Nelson Mandela, Sharon Gelman (Author), Michael Boatman (Narrator)

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Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased. Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Richard Miles vividly brings to life this lost empire-from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as the greatest seapower in the Mediterranean. And at the heart of the history of Carthage lies the extraordinary figure of Hannibal-the scourge of Rome and one of the greatest military leaders, but a man who also unwittingly led his people to catastrophe. The first full-scale history of Carthage in decades, Carthage Must Be Destroyed reintroduces modern listeners to the larger-than-life historical players and the ancient glory of this almost forgotten civilization.

Richard Miles (Author), Grover Gardner (Narrator)

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Hannibal: A History of the Art of War among the Carthaginians and Romans Down to the Battle of Pydna

Hannibal is often considered the finest general the world has ever known. Setting out from Carthaginian-dominated Spain with a small army of select troops, he fought his way over the Pyrenees and crossed the Alps with elephants and a full baggage train. Descending into Italy, he destroyed the main Roman army at Lake Trasimeno and came close to conquering Rome itself. At Cannae, Hannibal's brilliant cavalry tactics enabled him to destroy a reassembled Roman army, and his subsequent defeats over a fifteen-year stay in Italy were due more to lack of sufficient support from home than to any failings of generalship. Theodore Ayrault Dodge's classic history, first published in 1891, is equally perceptive of Hannibal's military prowess and his visionary character. Dodge followed Hannibal's route from Carthage to Italy, paying particular attention to the famous crossing of the Alps, exploring every pass in order to determine Hannibal's route. In this book, he wrote an entire history of the art of war among these two mighty armies. Hannibal remains unequaled as the most comprehensive and readable study of history's greatest general. "[This book] has never been bettered."—Michael Grant, author of History of Rome

Theodore Ayrault Dodge (Author), Bill Wallace (Narrator)

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Hannibal: A History of the Art of War among the Carthaginians and Romans Down to the Battle of Pydna

Theodore Ayrault Dodge (Author), Bill Wallace (Narrator)

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David Livingstone

Born in an overcrowded slum in Scotland in 1813, David Livingstone worked twelve-hour days in a cotton factory from age ten to twenty-four. But a pamphlet by Karl Gutzlaff changed his life. Resolved to become a missionary, he applied himself to medicine, self-educating and eventually qualifying as a doctor. In 1841, Livingstone left for Africa as a medical missionary, where he would stay for thirty years. In that time, he became a missionary geographer, ethnologist, chemist, botanist, astronomer, anthropologist, discoverer of Victoria Falls and the source of the Congo, and the first to cross the continent. Africans revered him as a virtual saint, while his academic accomplishments became Western legend.

Thomas Hughes (Author), Frederick Davidson (Narrator)

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David Livingstone

Thomas Hughes (Author), Frederick Davidson (Narrator)

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The Obamas

In the first in-depth history of the Obama family, Peter Firstbrook recounts a journey that starts in a mud hut by the White Nile and ends seven centuries later in the White House. Interweaving oral history and tribal lore, interviews with Obama family members and other Kenyans, the writings of Kenyan historians, and original genealogical research, Firstbrook sets the fascinating story of the president's family against the background of Kenya's rich culture and complex history. From the tribe's cradleland in southern Sudan, he follows the family generation by generation, tracing the paths of the famous Luo warriors'Obama's direct ancestors'and vividly illuminating Luo politics, society, and traditions. Firstbrook also brings to life the impact of English colonization in Africa through the eyes of President Obama's grandfather Onyango. And Firstbrook delves into the troubled life of Obama's father, a promising young man whose aspirations were stymied by post-independence tribal politics and a rash tendency toward self-destruction'two factors that his family believes contributed to his death in 1982. The Obamas reveals a family history'epic in scope yet intimate in feel'that is truly without precedent.

Peter Firstbrook (Author), Peter Firstbrook (Narrator)

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The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

Investigative journalist Dan Morrison takes a thoughtful, funny, and frightful trip across a region whose people are trying to claw their way from war and poverty to something better. Investigative journalist Dan Morrison hired a boat builder, summoned a childhood buddy, and set out paddling from Jinja, Uganda, down the White Nile toward Cairo. Four thousand miles, two companions, and several other means of local conveyance later, he emerged on the Mediterranean. The story Morrison tells of this spectacular—and spectacularly harrowing—journey is a mash-up of narrative travel writing, investigative reportage, and current history, resulting in a thoughtful, funny, and frightful trip across a region whose people are trying to claw their way from war and poverty to something better.

Dan Morrison (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)

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King Leopold's Ghost

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company's ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II's vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber. Outbound ships carried little more than soldiers and firearms. Correctly concluding that only slave labor on a vast scale could account for these cargoes, Morel resigned from his company and almost singlehandedly made Leopold's slavelabor regime the premier humanrights story in the world. Thousands of people packed hundreds of meetings throughout the United States and Europe to learn about Congo atrocities. Two courageous black Americans-George Washington Williams and William Sheppard-risked much to bring evidence to the outside world. Roger Casement, later hanged by Britain as a traitor, conducted an eyeopening investigation of the Congo River stations. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming over all was Leopold II, King of the Belgians, sole owner of the only private colony in the world.

Adam Hochschild (Author), Geoffrey Howard (Narrator)

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Price of Stones: Building a School for My Village

An incredibly inspiring and thrilling book, this is the story of Twesigye Jackson Kaguri, who grew up in rural southwestern Uganda, the son of an irascible small-time farmer and his loving wife. In spite of the family's poverty, Jackson succeeds and graduates from the national university with a calling to work in human rights that leads him to Columbia University. There he falls in love with and later marries an American scientist, Beronda. When Jackson returns to Uganda with his bride, they are overwhelmed by the many villagers who line up to ask for help with food and school fees'and having lost two siblings to AIDS, Jackson is especially moved by the plight of the thousands of abandoned AIDS orphans in his local district. Impulsively, he and Beronda vow to open the first tuition-free school for orphans. A newlywed with little money, and facing opposition from his domineering father and townspeople, Jackson doggedly builds one schoolroom at a time with the help of many supporters in Uganda and the financial pledges of churches in America, and with the sustenance of his strong faith in Jesus Christ. Weaving together stories from his youth in Uganda and the remarkable account of how one person with a dream can change lives'both his students' and his supporters''this is an unforgettable book that demonstrates that one person can be a cup of cold water to a thirsty world. The book concludes with the graduation of the first class of Nyaka AIDS orphans, almost all of whom Jackson and his supporters are sponsoring as they continue their education and dream of becoming doctors, teachers, lawyers, engineers, and even, perhaps, the future president of Uganda.

Susan Urbanek Linville, Twesigye Jackson Kaguri (Author), Richard Allen (Narrator)

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White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris

A little over 100 years ago, East Africa was terra incognita to most whites: a land largely unmapped, sparsely settled by Europeans, and teeming with wildlife. It was the hunter-adventurer's paradise, and by the early twentieth century a small, lionhearted clan of explorers and big-game hunters began leading safaris there for money. They became the legendary White Hunters, men who led manifold adventurers in pursuit of the world's biggest, most dangerous, and most sought-after game. 'White Hunters' is a nostalgic and densely-packed history of these men and their adventures, from the turn of the century until the 1970s, when politics, a growing population, civil strife, and concern about species destruction intervened. "Stunningly recreates that lost Eden of gallantry, endurance, and sudden death....Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Prince of Wales all have cameos, but true nobility here lies with the big five: Elephant, Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, and Rhinoceros."-AudioFile

Brian Herne (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

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Africa Audiobooks in Travel