West Africa   |   READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Essential Books These 5 items are available for $91, including
U.S. shipping, a 15% discount (Item no. EXWAF71)		  
African Silences  •  Peter Matthiessen
TRAVEL NARRATIVE •  1992 •  PAPER  • 225 PAGES
In this narrative of Equatorial Africa, Matthiessen recounts several trips to The Gambia, Senegal, Zaire and the Congo Basin in search of rhinos, elephants and other endangered wildlife. (WAF36, $13.00)		   African Silences
West African Folktales  •  Jack Berry  •  Richard Spears
ANTHOLOGY •  1991 •  PAPER  • 229 PAGES
A collection of 123 unembellished tales, well chosen and simply translated. It's a good introduction to the spirit of traditional cultures throughout West Africa. (WAF13, $21.00)		   West African Folktales
Africa, A Biography of the Continent  •  John Reader
HISTORY •  1999 •  PAPER  • 816 PAGES
With the ease of a practiced journalist, Reader weaves a masterful tale of the continent in this lively history of Africa, from ancient cultures to modern times. Both authoritative and informal, this is a splendid introduction to all of Africa. (AFR49, $18.95)		   Africa, A Biography of the Continent
Africa North and West Map  •  Michelin
2011 •  MAP
A fine map of the north and parts of western Africa, covering Senegal, The Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania and their neighbors as well as all the Mediterranean-bordering countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya) at a scale of 1:4,000,000. One Side. 40x57 inches. (AFR34, $11.95)		   Africa North and West Map
Lonely Planet West Africa  •  Lonely Planet
GUIDEBOOK •  2009 •  PAPER  • 904 PAGES
A comprehensive guide to all West Africa, this is the book to carry for travels from Mauritania to Niger, with both a good overview of culture and history and the usual Lonely Planet attention to practical travel information. The bulk of the book is devoted to individual countries. (WAF10, $33.99)		   Lonely Planet West Africa



Also Recommended

Niger Map  •  IGN    •  A good, full-color shaded relief map of Niger at a scale of 1:2,000,000. (AFR38, $16.95)
 		  
Bradt Guide Mali  •  Ross Velton   • GUIDEBOOK  •  This third edition of this excellent, travel-savvy guide covers the history, culture and attractions of Mali including its music and festivals. (WAF16, $27.99)
 		  
Lonely Planet Gambia and Senegal  •  David Else   • GUIDEBOOK  •  An excellent practical guide to The Gambia and Senegal geared for independent travelers, with good overviews of culture, history and natural attractions. (WAF01, $24.99)
 		  
Rough Guide West Africa  •  Jim Hudgens  •  Richard Trillo   • GUIDEBOOK  •  A comprehensive guide to all West Africa, including its history and culture. With its region-by-region descriptions, 172 maps and 12 pages of color photos, this guide covers from Mauritania south to Cameroon. (WAF38, $34.99)
 		  
Africa  •  Phyllis Martin  •  Patrick O'Meara   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  African history and prehistory, popular culture, art and economics -- it's all here in the most popular introductory text for undergraduate African studies courses in North America. With maps, photographs and drawings. (AFR07, $26.00)
 		  
Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles  •  Richard Dowden   • HISTORY  •  Africa editor of The Independent and The Economist, Richard Dowden draws on decades of experience in this multi-faceted, vivid portrait of contemporary Africa -- an Africa that, Dowden effectively argues, can only be developed by its own people. (AFR242, $19.95)
 		  
Ancient Middle Niger, Urbanism and the Self-Organizing Landscape  •  Roderick James McIntosh  •  Rita P. Wright   • HISTORY  •  A scholarly account of the ancient cities on the Middle Niger, which developed in the first millennium B.C. (WAF94, $34.99)
 		  
Captive Passage, The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas  •  The Mariners' Museum  •  Smithsonian Inst.   • HISTORY  •  A companion volume to the exhibition drawn largely from the collections of The Mariners' Museum. (ATL14, $21.95)
 		  
Dancing Skeletons, Life and Death in West Africa  •  Katherine Dettwyler   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  This detailed account of life in Mali by a cultural anthropologist won the Margaret Mead Award in 1995. (WAF14, $19.95)
 		  
Nine Hills to Nambonkaha  •  Sarah Erdman   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  Erdman's affectionate memoir of her time as a volunteer at a health clinic captures the rhythms, traditions and challenges of village life on the Ivory Coast in the days before civil war. (WAF72, $16.00)
 		  
The Africans  •  David Lamb   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  In these 17 well-written essays, news correspondent Lamb ranges throughout Africa, creating an insightful portrait of the land and especially its people. (AFR22, $19.95)
 		  
The Race for Timbuktu  •  Frank T. Kryza   • HISTORY  •  An engrossing account of imperial adventures in early 19th-century West Africa and the quest for fabled Timbuktu. (WAF88, $14.95)
 		  
The Slave Ship, A Human History  •  Marcus Rediker   • HISTORY  •  Rediker charts the history of slave ships, their crews, and their enslaved passengers, documenting harrowing stories of cruelty, bravery and surprising humanity. (ATL34, $17.00)
 		  
The Slave Trade  •  James Walvin   • HISTORY  •  Photographs, paintings and contemporary maps give insight into the reality and global impact of the transatlantic slave trade in this lively entry in the incisive History Files series. (ATL38, $24.95)
 		  
Themes In West Africa's History  •  Emmanuel Akyeampong   • HISTORY  •  Geared for university students, these review articles by leading scholars cover archaeology, ecology and culture, oral traditions, society, politics and religion in West Africa. (WAF114, $24.95)
 		  
West Africa Before the Colonial Era, A History to 1850  •  Basil Davidson   • HISTORY  •  Davidson puts the stories of peoples and empires into context in this lively, scholarly history. With maps, illustrations and a timeline. (WAF07, $60.00)
 		  
African Vodun: Art, Psychology and Power  •  Susanne Preston Blier   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  A detailed study of West African vodun traditions, particularly in Togo and Benin. Blier compares the psychological and visual elements of Vodun with related voodoo traditions of Haiti and New Orleans. (WAF74, $52.50)
 		  
A Zoo in My Luggage  •  Gerald Durrell   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  Charming stories of a six-month sojourn in British Cameroon in search of animals for his new zoo. (WAF78, $14.00)
 		  
Chasing the Devil, A Journey Through Sub-Saharan Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene  •  Tim Butcher   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  Using Graham Greene's 1936 Journey Without Maps as a guide, journalist Tim Butcher returns to war-torn Sierra Leone and Liberia in this engaging tale, mixing the author's own adventures with history and anecdote. (WAF156, $26.95)
 		  
French Lessons in Africa, Travels with My Briefcase Through French Africa  •  Peter Biddlecombe   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  A scandalously entertaining and useful introduction to Francophone Africa by the hilarious British writer and inveterate traveler. Organized geographically, he devotes a chapter each to Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Zaire. (WAF68, $17.95)
 		  
Journey Without Maps  •  Graham Greene   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  No one captures local personalities and complicated morality than Graham Greene, who had a particular interest in West Africa. This account traces his trek to the Liberian coast. (WAF15, $16.00)
 		  
Of Water and the Spirit, Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman  •  Malidoma Patrice Some   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  A window in the world view of West African religion, Malidoma Some's remarkable, enlightening account of his return to the Dagara people of Upper Volta shows his transformation from outsider to Shaman through a month-long initiation. (WAF110, $16.00)
 		  
Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa  •  Mungo Park   • EXPLORATION  •  Park chronicles of the culture, society and nature of West Africa before the colonial period in this classic account of a 24-year-old Scotsman exploring, often alone, in uncharted Africa. First published in 1799. (WAF40, $12.95)
 		  
Travels in West Africa  •  Mary Kingsley  •  Anthony Brandt   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  Kingsley writes with a self-deprecating wit and deadpan humor of her collecting expeditions throughout West Africa, first published to much acclaim in 1897. (WAF05, $14.95)
 		  
Wanderings in West Africa  •  Richard Francis Burton   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  This account, originally published in 1861, results from a three-year stint in the British Foreign office in Fernando Po, an island off the coast of West Africa. It's a valuable first-hand account of short trips around the West African coast. (WAF12, $19.95)
 		  
Ambiguous Adventure  •  Cheikh Hamidou Kane   • LITERATURE • COMING IN MARCH  •  This classic novel follows a Senegalese man in France, where he finds his Islamic faith at odds with a culture of materialism. (WAF118, $15.00)
 		  
God's Bits of Wood  •  Sembene Ousmane  •  Francis Price   • LITERATURE  •  A story of conflict between colonial powers and West African rail workers set in the late 1940s, written by Senegal's foremost novelist and filmmaker. (WAF22, $15.95)
 		  
Middle Passage  •  Charles Johnson   • LITERATURE  •  Winner of the National Book Award, this historical novel, set in 1830, is the richly imagined tale of a recently freed slave in New Orleans who signs aboard a square-rigger bound for Africa. (ATL02, $15.00)
 		  
No Sweetness Here and Other Stories  •  Ama Ata Aidoo   • ANTHOLOGY  •  A collection of eleven short stories about the lives of women and men in postcolonial Ghana and the tensions between traditional village and urban life; Aidoo's stories emphasize Ghana's prominent oral culture. (WAF23, $14.95)
 		  
Roots  •  Alex Haley   • LITERATURE  •  Haley's epic story of Kunta Kinte and his descendents opens in Jufureh The Gambia, in 1750, going on to traces seven generations of one family and tell the story of Africans in America. Thirtieth anniversary edition. (WAF21, $17.95)
 		  
Search Sweet Country  •  Kojo Laing   • LITERATURE • COMING IN OCTOBER  •  Twenty-fifth anniversary edition. Bringing to life the bustling markets and bars in dizzying, lyrical prose, Laing follows the lives of an eclectic group of Ghanaians living in or near the chaotic city of Accra in the 1970's. (WAF157, $24.00)
 		  
Segu  •  Maryse Conde  •  Barbara Bray   • LITERATURE  •  An epic novel set in the West African kingdom of Bambara (old Mali) in 1797, exhaustive in its detail and thoroughly addictive. Conde transforms actual historical events into a full-blooded, lively tale. (WAF17, $17.00)
 		  
Swallow  •  Sefi Atta   • LITERATURE  •  In her spirited and heartfelt tale of two young women trying to make a living in contemporary Lagos, Nigerian novelist Atta successfully tackles issues of gender, class, manipulation and corruption. (WAF153, $15.00)
 		  
Things Fall Apart  •  Chinua Achebe   • LITERATURE  •  The 50th anniversary edition of Achebe's celebrated novel of the young village leader Okonkwo, set during in 19th-century Nigeria during the drama and disruption of colonialism. (WAF56, $11.95)
 		  
Viceroy of Ouidah  •  Bruce Chatwin   • LITERATURE  •  Chatwin evokes in rich detail the rise to power of a wretched slave trader and the 19th-century court of Dahomey (Benin) in this slim novel. (WAF18, $13.00)
 		  
A Field Guide to the Birds of The Gambia and Senegal  •  Clive Barlow  •  Tim Wacher  •  Tony Disley   • FIELD GUIDE  •  A guide to 660 species of birds of Senegal and the Gambia, featuring 48 color plates and short descriptions on the facing pages. (WAF03, $45.00)
 		  
A Guide to the Birds of Western Africa  •  Nik Borrow  •  Ron Demey   • FIELD GUIDE  •  A comprehensive handbook and guide to the birds of Central and Western Africa from Senegal to Chad and the Congo, featuring 142 original color plates. (WAF59, $115.00)
 		  
Birds of Western Africa  •  Nik Borrow  •  Ron Demey   • FIELD GUIDE  •  A compact field edition of Barrow and Demey's comprehensive handbook, covering nearly 1,300 species from Senegal to Congo and featuring 150 color plates. (WAF76, $45.00)
 		  
Birds of Western and Central Africa, Princeton Illustrated Checklist  •  Ber Van Perlo   • FIELD GUIDE  •  An admirably compact, comprehensive guide to 1,500 species throughout Western and Central Africa featuring 109 color plates. (WAF02, $29.95)
 		  
National Audubon Society Field Guide to African Wildlife  •  Peter Alden   • FIELD GUIDE  •  This comprehensive photo guide covers 850 birds, mammals and reptiles of Africa. With range maps and a good country-by-country overview of habitats and parks. (AFR25, $24.95)
 		  
Primates of West Africa  •  John F. Oates   • FIELD GUIDE  •  Published by Conservation International, this comprehensive field guide covers the 80 species of primates of West Africa. (WAF163, $55.00)
 		  
Primates of West Africa  •  John F. Oates   • FIELD GUIDE  •  Illustrated by Stephen Nash, this pocket identification guide, with range maps, covers 80 species of primates of West Africa, (WAF164, $7.95)
 		  
 
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