We tend to understand the nuclear age as a historical break, a geopolitical and technological rupture. In Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press, 2012), Gabrielle Hecht transforms this understanding by arguing instead that nucl...

Ask most educated people about the development of American slavery, and you’re likely to hear something about Virginia or, just maybe, South Carolina. In his far-reaching but concise and elegantly written new book A New World of Labor: The Development ...

Thanks in no small part to John K. Thornton, professor of history at Boston University, the field of Atlantic history has emerged as one of the most exciting fields of historical research over the past quarter century.

In 2010, for the first time, an African nation hosted the FIFA World Cup. The advertisements surrounding the tournament used graphics and sounds intended to conjure the image of a vibrant, exotic land. In fact, though,

How did French colonial administrators, missionaries, and different groups of Africans interact with one another in colonial Senegal? In her new book, Faith in Empire: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Rule in French Senegal,

The question Lee Ann Fujii asks in her new book Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Cornell University Press, 2009) is a traditional one in genocide studies. Her research builds on earlier scholars such as Christopher Browning,

With elegant and accessible prose, Catherine Higgs takes us on a journey in Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa (Ohio University Press, 2012). It is a fascinating voyage fueled by the correspondence of Joseph Burtt,

Anybody who has been following the news in recent months knows that bloodshed has returned to South Africa. The recent violence and deaths among strikers in the country’s platinum mining industry resonate strongly in a country with such memories of the...

In Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Jason Brownlee explains the two countries relationship over the past several decades.  From the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty up to t...

The liberal media in the Western World takes a firm line on how two of the big issues facing Africa intersect – bluntly speaking Africa’s high levels of religiosity have contributed substantially to its high levels of HIV infection.

In the Pacific Northwest, immigrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia coexist, making a life for themselves and their family in a new country. In the book Seeking Salaam : Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis in the Pacific Northwest (University of Wash...

Every so often a book lands on my desk about something so obviously interesting that I have never really considered it before. Bruce Whitehouse‘s Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, Dignity, Belonging (Indiana University Press,

Three years ago I travelled overland with my wife from Victoria Falls through Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. It felt like we were on a real adventure. Having just read Steve Kemper‘s excellent book Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,

When I saw Nwando Achebe‘s book The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), I thought: “Really? A female king? Cool!” It turns out Ahebi Ugbabe was not only a female king, but also a female husband and father.

Imagine this: a young African girl, barefoot but wearing a dress and head wrap, clenches her fists and looks you in the eye. Behind her a semi-circle of men, some in suits and some in kente cloth, turn their backs to her. The girl is Abina,

Several months ago I interviewed Steve Bloomfield, the author of a book on African football, for New Books in African studies. As usual, I ended the interview with a simple enough sounding question: ‘Where is your favourite place in Africa?

Helen Tilley‘s new book Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2011) uncovers the surprising relationships that developed between science and empire as Britai...

Raymond Jonas‘ The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Harvard UP, 2011) places Menelik alongside Napoleon and other greatest strategists. The Ethiopian emperor carried out a brilliant maneuver across hundreds of miles,

When was the last time you ate some chocolate? If you live in the developed world there’s a strong chance that you’ve been munching on some fairly recently. At the basic level chocolate is an everyday treat and at the top end it is a seriously indulgen...

Much of the literature on modern Africa makes the unhappy comparison between hopes, especially upon independence, and reality. In Zimbabwe that link resonates even more than is normal. Zimbabwe only achieved full independence in 1980 after a brutal war...

Aside from being aesthetically equated to Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra has not fared well in history. In her riveting biography Cleopatra: A Life (Back Bay Books, 2011), which is now out in paperback, Stacy Schiff establishes that this was primarily bec...

We’ve dealt with the question of how racial categories and conceptions evolve on New Books in History before, most notably in our interview with Nell Irving Painter. She told us about the history of “Whiteness.

Few places can match the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakech for spectacle. As the shadows lengthen and dusk approaches, the square seethes with snake charmers, charlatans, showmen and chancers, all shrouded in charcoal smoke from dozens of makeshift food stall...

A couple of days ago I had an unusual experience. I was staying in a hotel in Kampala, with a stunning view of the southern reaches of the Ugandan capital and the northern edge of Lake Victoria. It was the weekend,