East Africa History

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists who demanded the release of 53 terrorists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe in Uganda - ruled by the murderous despot Idi Amin, who had no interest in intervening. Days later, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers assaulted the airport terminal, killed all the terrorists, and rescued all the hostages but three who were killed in the crossfire. The assault force suffered just one fatality.

An improbable world beckons. We think we know Madagascar, but it's too big, too eccentric and too impenetrable to be truly understood. If it was stretched out across Europe, the islands would reach from London to Algiers, and yet its road network is barely bigger than tiny Jamaica's. There is no evidence of any human life until about 10,000 years ago, and, when eventually people settled, it was migrants from Borneo - 3,700 miles away - who came out on top.

Ethiopia has a long history. It boasts one of the longest-running continuous civilizations on the planet; even the origins of humanity have been traced back to Ethiopia. Ethiopian kingdoms date back to the days of the Bible, and mentions of Ethiopian monarchs can be found all throughout the historical record.

Unknown Empire begins with a barefoot Ethiopian army defeating thousands of European soldiers in 1896. As the only African nation to never be conquered, they defeated Mussolini during WWII. With the West dying but Africa booming, Ethiopia faces population control leaders such as Bill Gates and the U.N. in an epic confrontation for the future of civilization. In all these confrontations, the ark of the covenant plays a central role for Ethiopians who believe that they have held the world's most famous object since before the time of Christ.

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.

The moving, inspiring David-and-Goliath true story of freedom and justice involving one tiny nation in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa, and the extraordinary woman, a descendent of slaves, who dared to take on the Crown and the United Kingdom—and win a historic victory.

As part of the Allied forces, thousands of Kenyans fought alongside the British in World War II. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler, the British colonial government detained nearly the entire population of Kenya's largest ethnic minority, the Kikuyu. Caroline Elkins spent a decade in London, Nairobi, and the Kenyan countryside interviewing hundreds of Kikuyu men and women who survived the British camps, as well as the British and African loyalists who detained them. The result is an unforgettable account of the unraveling of the British colonial empire in Kenya.

It was the war that changed everything, and yet it's been mostly forgotten: in 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. It dominated newspaper headlines and newsreels. It inspired mass marches in Harlem, a play on Broadway, and independence movements in Africa. As the British Navy sailed into the Mediterranean for a white-knuckle showdown with Italian ships, riots broke out in major cities all over the United States.

The Nile, like all of Egypt, is both timeless and ever-changing. In this audio, renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey downriver that is both history and travelogue. We begin at the First Nile Cataract, close to the modern city of Aswan. From there, Wilkinson guides us through the illustrious nation birthed by this great river.

For the first time, learn what really happened inside the walls of Hotel des Mille Collines. In Inside the Hotel Rwanda, survivor Edouard Kayihura tells his own personal story of what life was really like during those harrowing days within the walls of that infamous hotel and offers the testimonies of others who survived there, from Hutu and Tutsi to UN peacekeepers. Kayihura writes of a divided society and his journey to the place he believed would be safe from slaughter.

Birth of a Dream Weaver charts the very beginnings of a writer’s creative output. In this wonderful memoir, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o recounts the four years he spent at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda - threshold years during which he found his voice as a journalist, short story writer, playwright, and novelist just as colonial empires were crumbling and new nations were being born - under the shadow of the rivalries, intrigues, and assassinations of the Cold War.

This timely book offers a world history of insurgencies and of counterinsurgency warfare. Jeremy Black moves beyond the conventional Western-centric narrative, reaching back to antiquity to trace the pre-modern origins of war within states. His sweeping study will be essential material for all students of military history.

Abernethy’s 1910 book The Jew a Negro has been analyzed by numerous modern authors studying race relations in earlier times in America. Arthur Talmage Abernethy, PH. D., (1872 –1956) was a professor, Methodist pastor in New York and North Carolina, and a Democratic candidate for congress in North Carolina. He was a gifted speaker and author a score of historical books, as well as being the youngest son of the founder of Rutherford College. He was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and became the poet laureate of North Carolina.

When Ugandan President Idi Amin expelled the country's entire Asian population in 1972, more than 28,000 people from Britain's former colony arrived on airstrips around the country and began building new lives - but their incredible stories remained largely hidden. Fifty years later, first and second-generation testimony uncovers an under-explored period of history, touching on colonialism, immigration, identity and modern multiculturalism through the lens of individual experience.

Renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson leads us through space as much as time: From the river's mystical sources (the Blue Nile which rises in Ethiopia, and the White Nile coursing from majestic Lake Victoria); to Thebes, with its Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and Luxor Temple; the fertile Delta; Giza, home of the Great Pyramid, the sole surviving Wonder of the Ancient World; and finally, to the pulsating capital city of Cairo, where the Arab Spring erupted on the bridges over the Nile.

The Devil Came on Horseback is an intense, vivid autobiographical report from the heart of violent Darfur and a call to action by a former American Marine who became a military observer for the African Union. The first extensive on-the-ground account of the genocide in Sudan, it leads us through the tragic impact of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens and the frustrating complexity of international inaction.

The first volume of Adel Ben-Harhara's three-volume memoir delves into the voyage of a boy who was separated from his mother as a toddler and essentially orphaned at the age of five when his father died. With his mother’s inability to provide support, the boy was often left on the streets. As a child, the boy received extensive religious teachings in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. As an adolescent Marxist in Ethiopia, he was imprisoned for taking part in a Communist party youth movement and barely avoided the death squad’s bullets before moving to his ancestors’ land: Yemen.

In this audiobook, you will travel back to ancient Egypt, when kings were considered gods, pharaohs built towering pyramids, great battles were fought, and the world as we know it today was formed. Journey through time and make history come alive with fun, interesting, and up-to-date facts on all the major events during one of the most fascinating periods in time!

As you study the African myths, legends, and folklore through this guide, you will find that there are so many gods and goddesses, and so many different versions of certain stories, that it will blow your mind. The intricate myths in this book have been lined up and collected to help you understand some of the earliest, most ancient beliefs from those living on the African continent. Some have been influential in our day, and some have been completely forgotten except for vague traditions that have been passed on from one generation to the next.

The key to understanding the Arab world today - and in the future - is unlocking its past. John McHugo takes the reader on a journey through the political, social and intellectual history of the Arabs from the Roman Empire right up to the present day. He covers the mission of the Prophet Muhammad, the expansion of Islam, medieval and modern conflicts, the interaction with Western ideas, the struggle to escape foreign domination, the rise of Islamism, and the end of the era of dictators.