The authors of this inspiring and much needed revisionist academic work on the actual consequences of the land reform have delivered a highly intriguing book which explores the most common myths about the subject at hand.

The Languages of Urban Africa is a remarkable book that addresses the phenomenon of urban languages historically, while exploring the complex interplay between language and identity in the light of the evolution of urban languages in Africa. Great book, you should at least skim through!

Laura Freschi writes an interesting review of Michaela Wrong’s latest book, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower. I posted a comment to her review as I think she missed some points that should be made about this startling book. I’m also posting my comment here for personal reflections. Mrs Freschi, [...]

The most important thing that one should take out of the book is that we should not take things for granted. Here in America we have a great opinion about this beautiful country and are proud of what our nation has achieved. But as the two authors show, we tend to miss or neglect what we don’t see. Slavery in America is not something most of us see or even want to see. With the help of this great book, I believe we can shift from ignoring this crude reality to doing something to eradicate this abominable practice.

The book is highly prescient: it seems written from tomorrow’s newspapers, despite having been written in 2006 (the French version.) Very important is Martinez’ argument on why Libya has shifted towards the West, especially towards America. It is not because the regime has any intention to change its practices or the way of governing the country. It is because the regime had the feeling that Libya could rightfully be considered a new Iraq and therefore the US could justify an attack on it, since “Libya was developing a nuclear and chemical weapons programme, […] Libya was a terrorist State, headed by an anti-Israeli dictator.”(46) In other words, Gaddafi changed his policy in order not to share the faith of Saddam Hussein, not because he really believed a good relationship with the US would be in his best long term interests.

The politics of obsession Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe’s Future by Martin Meredith Paperback 244 pages; Published in the United States by PublicAffairs (2002, 2003, 2007); Previously published under the title Our Votes, Our Guns; In a book of tremendous power, given mainly by its fast paced, lucid and concise style, Martin [...]