Fans pick 100 books like Global Shadows

I love this book because it amply illustrates the ways global geopolitics damage far less powerful countries, such as Eritrea. Wrong shows how stronger countries’ national desires deeply limited the opportunities of those in a small country. The Italians were Eritrea’s first occupiers. They were defeated by the British and the tens of thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers who fought alongside them.

The book’s title comes from a legend of an old woman thanking the British for their release from Fascist rule. He told her he “didn’t do it for” her. And indeed, the British did not. After their victory, they stripped and destroyed a great deal of the well-built Italian infrastructure. The Italians were followed by Ethiopia, who claimed historical rights backed by key global players, leading to a long civil war.

Wrong’s tale is a haunting one for many reasons. One is that the wrongdoers seem to… show more.

I love this book and have taught it a number of times because the protagonist challenges us not to like her, and we do anyway. The novel's first line is that her brother died, and she is not sad. From that point on, you are enveloped in the complex and conflicting dynamics of an extended Shona family that has been changed by missionary education in what was then Southern Rhodesia.

It becomes clear that Western education, mostly by design, introduces students to concepts (if not languages) foreign to their families of origin. The result can be estrangement and division. The novel is semi-autobiographical and a moving illustration of colonialism's social and cultural impact.

I loved this book because it clearly demonstrates not only how Western Kenyans (in this case, the Luo) think about their economy but also its resilience despite more than 100 years of Western imposition. Shipton shows that Luo acts within relationships and thinks of economics in terms of giving and receiving. Thus, it is better to always be indebted to a number of people (including the dead and land) in the sense that you “owe” them something. This is what Shipton calls entrustment. It is an obligation but also strategic.

Such a way of life creates a more stable and resilient future for small-scale farmers and herders. Rather than seeking a more holistic economy in the West, we need only learn from our global neighbors about their centuries-long systems that have served them well.

I loved Rist’s book because it totally changed the way I thought about the idea of development. It made it more complicated and far more sinister than I had been led to believe. His definition alone is provocative: development destroys social and environmental systems. But there is much more here to get one thinking.

He starts by saying that development is a plastic word with so many different meanings that it can apply to almost anything. He traces its use in the West and then its application as a universal ideal through foreign policy and international institutions (like the United Nations and World Bank). The result is global disparity. Development somewhere requires poverty (or less development) elsewhere on a finite planet.

The ascent to power of Xi Jinxing in China in 2013 heralded a new era in China’s overseas engagements and in its domestic politics and economic policy; what Elizabeth Economy has called the “third revolution.” This fascinating book by Large brings the story of China’s engagements in Africa up to date. It is packed with fascinating details and analysis and shows how China’s interests on the continent are shifting from being primarily economic to being more geopolitical. It is a detailed and nuanced analysis of the changed nature of relations. 

A watershed work in the new history of “the global Cold War” in the Third World, where Cuba’s revolutionary government acted with remarkable audacity to offer material, human, and military support to African revolutionaries (with the Soviet Union often a minor player). Gleijeses performed archival feats in Cuba, Africa, and the U.S. to bring together this many-sided portrait of skullduggery, intimate solidarity, and Cuban revolutionary agency.  

In this superb, prize-winning book, Cooper shows that despite France’s often gruesome treatment of its African colonies, its postwar leaders tried to make amends. After taking power in 1958, Charles de Gaulle gave each of France’s African territories three choices: 1) full departmental status within the French Republic (à la Martinique and Guadeloupe); 2) internal autonomy and democratic self-government in a newly dubbed French Community modeled on the British Commonwealth; 3) complete independence with a cutoff of all financial assistance. Every territory voted for option 2, except Guinea, which chose independence. Although the Community option ultimately fell apart, Cooper shows nonetheless that there was nothing inevitable about the devolution of France’s African empire into a series of independent nation-states.

London 1945: the heir to the largest tribe of Bechuanaland (Botswana) arrives in Britain. Seretse Khama, an urbane 24-year-old was welcomed into the elite world of Oxford. But when he fell in love with Englishwoman Ruth Williams, the full force of colonial power was brought to bear to prevent their marriage. 

It has personal resonance for me because when I met Atam, in 1964, Smethwick was in the grip of a racist campaign. Atam and I volunteered to help the sitting Labour MP, Patrick Gordon Walker combat the Conservative Peter Griffiths’ campaign. The slogan was, ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour’. Atam was welcomed because he spoke Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu and we accompanied Patrick Gordon Walker canvassing. When I watched A United Kingdom, the film about Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, I knew that they had portrayed it well when the government representatives treat… show more.

Jeffrey Herbst also looks at the past and present of the African continent, and ecology and demography also come into his story. But his main subject is the specific nature of power and state in Sub–Saharan Africa and the inter-relations between the two. He traces this defining aspect of Africa’s reality through several centuries and presents it within the global context by drawing in experiences of self-organisation of power and state in other continents and regions. Continuity is for him the key to understanding the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial past and even the future of the continent.

This short book is without doubt the best introduction to African travel (and in my opinion one of the greatest travel books ever written).

Ranging across the whole continent, Kapuscinski’s evocative writing, although not always sticking religiously to factual details, captures the essence—and the magic—of the place like nobody else can. The book, along with his other great works on Africa Another Day of Life and The Emperor, was a major influence on both why I wanted to get to know Africa and how I write about it.