Africa

Immerse yourself in the vast and intricate story of Africa and discover Africa’s true place in world history.Spanning more than 200,000 years, from the emergence of the first humans to the rise of megacities, Africa explores the history and cultures of the world’s second-largest continent in vivid detail. It brings to life the stories that shaped Africa and the world around it, from powerful and influential empires and kingdoms such as Mali and Benin, through the struggle against colonization and the fight for independence, to Africa’s place on the global stage today.You will meet some of Africa’s most important political and military leaders, including Hannibal, Mansa Moussa, Oba Ewuare, Shaka Zulu, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Ellen Sirleaf. Lavish photography showcases the great art and architecture that African civilizations have created, while engaging text written by experts of African heritage covers every facet of African cultures, from music and literature to religions, mythology, and languages. Exclusive CGI illustrations recreate iconic buildings and life in lost cities such as Timbuktu and Great Zimbabwe.Beautifully illustrated and unparalleled in scope, Africa is the perfect book for anyone who is looking to deepen their understanding of Africa’s vital and inspiring history.

Dr. Nemata Blyden (consultant) is Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. A product of many places in the Black world, she received her PhD from Yale University and now teaches and publishes on various aspects of African and African diaspora history, imperialism, colonialism, women, and gender. Her books include West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: A Diaspora in Reverse (2000) and African Americans and Africa: A New History (2019). She recently served as a consultant and contributor for DK’s The Black History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (2021). Dr. Morenikeji Asaaju is a Cadbury Postdoctoral Fellow in African Studies at the University of Birmingham. She received her PhD from the University of Bayreuth, and was a Leventis Scholar at SOAS and a Leventis Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. She is a historian of Africa with research interests in gender, marriage, family, and social change; slavery, emancipation, and the slave trade; and political and legal changes in 20th-century Africa. She is currently working on her first book, which explores the social and cultural processes of heterosexual relationships as African societies confront changes imposed by the colonial order and by changing political regimes and conventions of masculinity and femininity.Dr. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola received his PhD from Rice University and is a Smuts Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the British Museum. His research interests include African archaeology and prehistory, the emergence of complex societies, early craft production, landscape studies, material culture, cultural resource management, and African/ African diaspora studies. His recent publications include Glass Beads in West Africa in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2022); Creativity, Improvisation, Resilience, and Glassmaking in Early Ile-Ife in the International Journal of African Historical Studies (2021); and an essay in Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa (2019).Dr. Obert Mlambo is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and History at the University of Zimbabwe. He received his PhD from the University of Zimbabwe, and was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Cologne’s Institute of African Studies and Egyptology and a Visiting Scholar at the university’s Global South Studies Center. His research and publications cover multidisciplinary perspectives and relate the Classics to African cultures and contexts. His most recent publications include Land Expropriation in Ancient Rome and Contemporary Zimbabwe: Veterans, Masculinity and War (2022) and chapters in Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle (2022) and (u)Mzantsi Classics: Dialogues in Decolonisation from Southern Africa (2022). Patience Motsatsi studied sociology at the University of Pretoria and is now Junior Lecturer in Sociology at