Books like The Sunbird

Few other books romanticize Africa the way this book does. A great deal has changed since it was published in 1937, but Danish author Karen Blixen’s whimsical account of her eighteen years in Africa remains enchanting.

I am particularly partial to the theme of determined, independent women living largely alone in remote places, enjoying the wonders of the natural world, and being adventurous and resourceful. I grew up on a farm in Africa and relate to the associated joys and challenges. 

A few years back, my husband and I were forced to do some impromptu, middle-of-the-night sheep obstetrics.

We never would have had the nerve if we hadn’t spent the previous winter curled up reading everything James Herriot ever wrote. Which, in turn, we wouldn’t have done if his writing wasn’t so appealing!

I loved the various and variable characters (human and animal) that populate his memoir about working as a country vet in Yorkshire, and I learned a lot, vicariously, about pre-antibiotic veterinary practices.

Comfort reading at its best. (Both ewe and lamb survived.)

This is the true story of a game ranger who worked with African Wildlife in the early part of the history of the Kruger National Park. It is a well-written account of a bygone error where the heroic deeds of one man could make a difference. I loved this book because it evoked in me a sense of the dramatic history of the Southern African Game Reserves and the struggle to attain recognition during the early days when animals were a resource only to be hunted. There were a few brave men who recognized the value of conservation and preservation of wildlife, leading to the wildlife game reserve industry as we know it today. If not for the efforts of these few brave souls our world today would be a poorer place.

The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the African Continent from 1876 to 1912 is a comprehensive history of the colonization of African territory by European powers between 1876 to 1912 known as the Scramble for Africa.

I am an African. I was born and raised in Africa. When I read about the horrors of the colonization of the continent I live on, I simply could not believe what I was reading. It took a lot more reading and research before I fully understood the implications and impact of this colonization. This led me to understand the place of wildlife in the early history of colonization and the evolution of a wildlife ethic.

Colonial powers viewed Africa as their sole domain for domination of its people and exploitation of its resources for the benefit of the colonial power and no benefit at all to the colony. Humans and… show more.

If you can read only one book on human evolution, this is it. “Lucy,” a fossil Australopithecus afarensis, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, is the proverbial “missing link.” About three million years old, she had a chimpanzee-size brain, about 400cc (as opposed to modern humans, about 1200cc), and yet walked upright. Told by Don Johanson, one of the team who discovered her, and science writer Martin Edey, the book is informative, serious, and yet at the same time written with a light touch that makes the tale akin to a thriller like Stephen King. It is a thriller. Our great great grandma was not Eve, eating illicit apples, but a modified monkey roaming the plains of Africa.

Based on the "radiocarbon revolution" as a method of dating archaeological finds, the great English archaeologist Sir Colin Renfrew redraws the map of the dawn of civilization in the Mediterranean basin and in Europe. The result is a new framework, in which the idea of a single cradle, located between Egypt and the Middle East, from which civilization would have spread to the rest of Europe, is replaced by the identification of different places where it started, scattered throughout the continent.

This one is 359 pages and says almost nothing about the 20th century. It is quirky in terms of what it includes and what it leaves out, but reliable in its facts and judgments, and full of insights I haven’t encountered elsewhere. It does not bother with grand theories or overarching narrative, but focuses on what the author finds interesting. Cook is a specialist on the history of Islam, which gives the book an uncommon vantage point. 

Hapgood was a lecturer who used the bright young minds of some of his graduate students to make a detailed study of a pre-Columbian map drawn in 1513 by a Turkish Admiral by the name of Pirie Re’is. Rei’is had drawn his map using source maps made by Alexander the Great and even earlier peoples. It is of the Atlantic showing the Americas correctly drawn and placed. There is an ice-free Antarctica where the correct outline of the coast of Queen Maude land is less than 7 miles out of place. Hapgood’s similar analysis of other maps shows that there had been a global civilization on this planet sometime in the past.

No list of historical fiction depicting the Indians’ way of life would be complete without the inclusion of a book by the Gears, who’ve written many novels of Native life years before the arrival of European explorers.

I like this book because it’s a bit of a retelling of Hansel and Gretel set in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) culture. Two young children are among many captured by a witch and bound for an uncertain fate. The book delves into the widespread fear of witches in many Indian cultures and also offers a glimpse of life among the Haudenosaunee, who famously lived in large agricultural communities, dwelling in longhouses surrounded by palisades.

This important volume traces a picture of European prehistory, from the earliest agricultural communities of the Neolithic period to the Roman world. Stuart Piggott, who was a great English scholar of the twentieth century, guides us here to understand the ancient roots of facts and situations that have gradually evolved up to the history we know well.