The Africans: A Triple Heritage

The Africans: A Triple Heritage

Product Description Looks at the history, geography, and culture of Africa, assesses native, Arab, and Western influences, and discusses sports, religion, government, and social issues in Africa From Publishers Weekly For a TV series soon to air on PBS, a Kenyan political scientist who teaches in Nigeria and at the University of Michigan has organized a stimulating introduction to Africas peoples and problems that is superior to most previous books of this kind. With great skill, Mazrui traces Africas indigenous, Islamic and Western heritages in the organization and structure of religions, the slave trade, modern technology, the civil-military pendulum, capitalism without winter, language, cultural changeeven participation in sports. The very concept of Africa, he notes, was created by Western geographers, and it was actually white foreigners who unintentionally gave inhabitants of the continent the idea of Africanness and an African identity. Throughout, Mazrui provocatively suggests remedies for Africas malaise. Photos. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal In stressing Africas unique culture as a product of three major influences (Islamic, Western, and indigenous), political scientist Mazrui points out that the West has tended to regard Africa as recipient rather than as transmitter of effects. Yet Africa has transformed both Europe and America in the past, and the difficult situation in which Africa finds itself today (economically dependent, culturally mixed, and politically unstable) is the price it has had to pay for Western development. This companion volume to the controversial TV series is thought-provoking for the authors frank and outspoken manner of presenting the facts as well as for the facts themselves. The book is chock full of information and unique ideas, has beautiful pictures, and should be read both by experts and laypeople. Recommended for public as well as university collections. Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Lib., Gainesville Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.