Beat about the Bush: Mammals
• Trevor Carnaby
NATURAL HISTORY •
2007 •
PAPER
• 380 PAGES
Addressing everything from how an elephant's trunk works to why the blue whale is not a fish, this comprehensive question-and-answer guide to South African mammals includes more than 700 color photographs and a detailed section on tracks and signs, making it a must-have for anyone wanting to know about the mammals of the bush region. Trevor Carnaby has been a professional field guide for more than 14 years. The author has worked as a head guide, environmental manager, and guide trainer in the Sabi Sands Game Reserve and is now a specialist guide based in northern Botswana.
(SAF219, $40.00) |
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Birds of Southern Africa, Princeton Illustrated Checklists
• Ber Van Perlo
FIELD GUIDE •
2009 •
PAPER
• 320 PAGES
An admirably compact guide, featuring small illustrations of 1,250 species, brief descriptions and black-and-white range maps. A "Princeton Illustrated Checklist," this compact book is especially appealing for the advanced birder who doesn't require more extensive descriptions.
(SAF79, $29.95) |
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Blue Shoes and Happiness
• Alexander McCall Smith
LITERATURE •
2007 •
PAPER
• 240 PAGES
Mma Ramotswe shows her usual equipoise in this seventh installment in McCall-Smith's best-selling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, confronting a cobra in her office, keeping her trusty assistant on track, and enjoying the domestic life with her new husband. Of course, she also deftly solves a number of intriguing problems brought to her by clients. This series is not only an addictive pleasure but also a window into life and culture and traditions in Botswana.
(BOT25, $14.00) |
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Eye of the Leopard
• Beverly Joubert
• Dereck Joubert
NATURAL HISTORY •
2009 •
HARD COVER
• 208 PAGES
The duo documents the life of one young leopard in dazzling color-saturated and evocative black-and-white photographs. With accompanying stories, bits of poetry and commentary by the Jouberts, who filmed the leopard they named Legadema at Mombo Camp in Botswana's Moremi Reserve.
(AFR256, $75.00) |
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Eye of the Leopard
• National Geographic Society
NATURAL HISTORY •
2006 •
DVD
The Joubert's chronicle a journey of birth, life and death over three years as a mother leopard and her first cub fight off marauding baboons and elude scavenging hyenas in a struggle for survival.
(BST187, $19.95) |
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The Full Cupboard of Life
• Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY •
2005 •
PAPER
• 198 PAGES
The fifth episode in the ongoing adventures of Mma Ramotswe (still engaged to be married), her assistant Mma Makutsi (who is also deputy manager of the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors Garage) and various clients for the only ladies detective agency in a fully realized Botswana. The Kalahari Typing School for Men (introduced in the last installment) is still going strong.
(BOT19, $14.00) |
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The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
• Alexander McCall Smith
LITERATURE •
2008 •
PAPER
• 240 PAGES
The eight installment of the beloved series. If anything deeper than usual, this latest novel gives assistant sleuth Grace Makutski an opportunity to shine -- along with Mma Ramotswe's darling husband (who wonders if he is exciting enough for her). Oh, and they solve mysteries.
(BOT27, $14.95) |
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The Harmless People
• Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •
1989 •
PAPER
• 303 PAGES
A classic study of the Bushmen of the Kalahari, first published in 1959 and updated by the author in the 1980s. It's an account of the author's fieldwork, direct and informative, strong on the character of the people and land.
(SAF60, $15.95) |
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The Healing Land, The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert
• Rupert Isaacson
TRAVEL NARRATIVE •
2003 •
PAPER
• 278 PAGES
This dark contemporary tale of discovery works as an antidote to the nostalgia of Van der Post's classic Lost World of the Kalahari. Isaacson, a journalist and travel writer raised with tales of Southern Africa and the San, documents the poverty, social disruption and struggle of a people who have been displaced from their land. The tale revolves around Dawid Kruiper, a traditional Xhomani Bushmen leader and healer, who introduces the author to ancient notions of power, wisdom, healing and strength. Without losing site of his main goal of reporting on the predicament of the Bushmen across their original lands, Isaacson embarks on his own spiritual quest.
(SAF135, $13.00) |
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In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
• Alexander McCall Smith
LITERATURE •
2006 •
PAPER
• 233 PAGES
In this the sixth installment of McCall Smith's delightful series our hero Precious Ramotswe, newly married (!) to master mechanic J.L.B. Metekoni, encounters an assortment of troubles, which she handles with her usual aplomb. The book, like all the installments in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, is imbued with the traditions, folkways and landscapes of Botswana. It's also a lot of fun.
(BOT22, $14.95) |
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The Kalahari Typing School for Men
• Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY •
2004 •
PAPER
• 191 PAGES
This, the fourth in the enormously pleasurable series starring Botswana's only Lady Detective, finds our hero, Precious Ramotswe, grappling with a dead hoopoe in the garden, a competing Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency and the aspirations of her assistant (to open the aforementioned typing school). She's also moved her business into her fiance's garage. If it weren't for all these complications, she might have already been wed.
(BOT17, $14.00) |
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The Last Lions
• Dereck & Beverly Joubert
2012 •
DVD
Filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert track the one lioness, Ma di Tau (Mother of Lions) and her three newborns in the Okavango.
(BOT43, $19.99) |
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Lonely Planet Botswana & Namibia
• Lonely Planet
GUIDEBOOK •
2010 •
PAPER
• 424 PAGES
A comprehensive, practical guide to Botswana, Namibia and nearby Victoria Falls in Lonely Planet's hallmark style with detailed maps. It includes a separate chapter on Victoria Falls.
(BOT14, $27.99) |
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Lost World of the Kalahari
• Laurens van der Post
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •
1986 •
PAPER
• 279 PAGES
Originally published in 1958, this poetic book is the story of a quest to find the San people in the remote desert. It has become a classic romanticized tale of an encounter between the literate European and "noble savage": mystical, captivating and a useful record of a time.
(SAF24, $21.95) |
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The Miracle at Speedy Motors
• Alexander McCall Smith
LITERATURE •
2009 •
PAPER
• 240 PAGES
Ever exuberant, extraordinarily productive Alexander McCall Smith once again channels the life and world view of a certain Precious Ramotswe in this latest installment in his endlessly pleasurable No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Our sensible, redbush tea-drinking heroine helps a woman find her relatives, enjoys the company of her sweet-hearted husband (proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors) and gets mixed up in the lives of her neighbors. Not much action for a murder mystery but McCall Smith wittily conjures the society, folklore and daily life of bygone Gaberone.
(BOT31, $14.95) |
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Morality for Beautiful Girls
• Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY •
2002 •
PAPER
• 225 PAGES
The continuing and delightful adventures of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, this time the enterprising Mma Ramotswe expands her business to take in the world of car repair and a beauty pageant. This is the third book in the series. Next on deck is The Kalahari Typing School for Men. We can hardly wait.
(BOT12, $14.95) |
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Mortals, A Novel
• Norman Rush
LITERATURE •
2004 •
PAPER
• 736 PAGES
A dazzling novel from the National Book Award-winning author of Mating, set among American expatriates in 1990s Botswana. Rush pulls off the trick of making the sprawling book (note the page count!) both personally and politically charged.
(SAF141, $15.95) |
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The Myth of Wild Africa
• Jonathan Adams
• Thomas McShane
NATURAL HISTORY •
1996 •
PAPER
• 290 PAGES
Thomas Lovejoy called this book essential reading. It's a no-holds-barred attack on old-style conservation in Africa- provocative, fascinating and dead-on. The authors, associated with the World Wildlife Fund, explode the romantic fallacy of an untouched continent where animals roam freely in sanctuaries. The relationship of wildlife -- and the people who share the continent with them -- is central to the future of conservation.
(AFR15, $29.95) |
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
• Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY •
2009 •
PAPER
• 235 PAGES
Alexander McCall Smith's formidable, straight-shooting detective, Precious Ramotswe, makes her debut in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. A pleasure in every respect, the novel evokes the cultures, customs and diverse landscapes of Botswana -- even including Botswana's tremendous national pride (Mma Ramotswe, for her part, believes that Hell is a "terrible place, perhaps a bit like Nigeria"). Be warned: if you like this delightful book, and you will, McCall Smith has written a slew of sequels, with more coming every year.
(BOT10, $13.95) |
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Okavango, A Field Guide
• Lee Gutteridge
FIELD GUIDE •
2011 •
PAPER
• 800 PAGES
Both a field guide and overview of the ecology of the region, this comprehensive guide, featuring 3,000 color images, covers not just birds and mammals but also tracks and signs, reptiles and amphibians, insects, flowers and trees.
(BOT35, $60.00) |
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The San of the Kalahari
• Jurgen Schadeberg
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •
2012 •
HARD COVER
• 96 PAGES
In the late fifties German photographer Jurgen Schadeberg joined an expedition led by the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, to study the San - bushmen who lived all across southern Africa before tribal wars and colonialism pushed them into the parched deserts of the Kalahari. Schadeberg's intimate black and white portraits capture the San at rest and play and include rare and unique shots of shamanic rituals.
(PHT39, $41.95) |
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The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party
• Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY •
2012 •
PAPER
• 256 PAGES
The twelfth installment in the best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series follows more of the adventures of Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi in Botswana.
(BOT40, $14.95) |
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Tea Time for the Traditionally Built
• Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY •
2010 •
PAPER
• 240 PAGES
In this 10th installment in the series Mma Ramotswe gets tangled up with a search for her beloved van (sold out from under her by her husband), her quirky secretary is having love problems (complicated by the unpleasant Violet Sephotho) and she's hired by the local football team to investigate their losing streak. Its business as usual for The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
(BOT33, $14.00) |
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Tears of the Giraffe
• Alexander McCall Smith
MYSTERY •
2002 •
PAPER
• 202 PAGES
The second of the Mma. Ramotswe detective novels, this time her case considerably complicated by romantic difficulties, her quite entertaining assistant and the arrival of unexpected family members.
(BOT11, $14.95) |
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A Carrion Death
• Michael Stanley
MYSTERY •
2009 •
PAPER
• 464 PAGES
The debut of Detective David "Kubu" Bengu of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department, an investigator whose personality and physique match his moniker, the Setswana word for hippopotamus --which is a seemingly docile beast, but one of the deadliest, and most persistent, on the continent.
(BOT37, $14.99) |
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The Last Lions
• Dereck & Beverly Joubert
NATURAL HISTORY •
2011 •
PAPER
• 176 PAGES
Filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert track the one lioness, Ma di Tau (Mother of Lions) and her three newborns in the Okavango in this companion book to their feature film produced by National Geographic.
(BOT41, $24.00) |
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