11 Books Like The Book Of Not

Like many people, I was really impressed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on the problem of a single story. So when I saw that she’d written a short chapbook of feminist advice for a friend who’d recently become a mother to a baby girl, I had to get my hands on a copy. My own daughter was still a preschooler when it came out, so I figured I had just enough time to make good on the fifteen pieces of advice she offers. Witty, wise, and supremely accessible, this is a book for mothers and daughters equally – as well as anyone with an interest in building a more just and equitable world for all.

This book really helped me to gain a deeper understanding of myself. I love books that help you to figure yourself out and this book does. I liked the way I could just jump in and find the section I needed. It is a book I will go back to over and over. 

This one deserves all the flowers.

"I was not sorry when my brother died."

That opening line alone should tell you you're in for something different.

Nervous Conditions is the first in Tsitsi Dangarembga's powerful trilogy, and in my opinion, the strongest of the three. We meet Tambu, a bright young girl growing up in rural Zimbabwe, hungry for education and everything it promises. Independence. Freedom. A different life.

But that freedom doesn't come easy.

Not when you're a girl.

Not when poverty is your portion.

Not when your opportunities are tied to the death of a sibling.

Tambu grows her own corn to sell in town, determined to make something of herself when no one else will bet on her. The writing is bold and the tone matter-of-fact but piercing. It's a coming-of-age story wrapped in complex family dynamics, colonial legacy, gender expectations, and deep internal conflict.

I especially… show more.

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.

Okay, he was my dissertation advisor. Sorry! But Thompson’s is a concise, perceptive, and readable one-volume history of the great country, a splendid introduction. Born and raised in South Africa, the late Thompson was a Rhodes Scholar before seeing extensive service in World War II. Like so many talented South Africans from many fields, he went into exile around 1960 when the apartheid regime moved toward a no-holds-barred stranglehold on all opposition. This was his last book, and in it he distills a lifetime of research, teaching and experience. The fourth edition has an update and new preface by Lynn Berat.

I read this book first on a long flight, and I had bought it at my departure airport. It was chosen because of my belief that Mandela thus far remains the quintessential leader that most of Africa still lacks!

An autobiography captures the nuanced structural trajectories and diverse challenges of the African state. A story of struggle, but it demonstrates the value of resilience and the need for painstaking commitment to the ideals of national development, despite the pain it may cause to the leader. A must-read for leaders and aspiring leaders in Africa, since despite focusing on the peculiar context of South Africa and the struggles of Mandela, it also embodies fine examples for principled leadership and statecraft that are still very much relevant now.

This type of book taught me much about my own country, Zambia. It starts with the story of David Livingstone’s “discovery” of Victoria Falls, and many characters, including a choir of mosquitos, took me for a wild ride through colonial history, the struggle for independence, modern-day Zambia, and then into the future.

I had learned about some of the historical events in school, but many were revelations unearthed by Serpell’s meticulous research. I found the characters riveting, and the storytelling complex, creative, and exciting. Reading this incredible book has also made me richer in my knowledge of my home country. 

Move Your Shadow is a masterpiece of reportage. Lelyveld, a former executive editor of the New York Times, spent considerable periods in apartheid South Africa in both the 1960s and the 1980s. The sixties was the period of “baaskap”—“bosshood” apartheid, when the perverse racist cruelties of the system were imposed with a sledgehammer. I would call the eighties the era of “facelift” apartheid—why, the word was hardly used by the regime anymore. 

To paraphrase Gramsci, the old world was dying, a new one struggled to be born. Monsters abounded. Nobody captured the period better than Lelyveld. The chapter on Philip Kgosana, the idealist who led Cape Town demonstrations in 1960—at age 19—was betrayed by the state, and wound up in exile in Sri Lanka—is worth the price of the book.

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.