Guinea Books

In Search of Africa

Manthia Diawara

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Subjects -> History -> Africa -> General

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Editorial Review:

With unending images of cultural backwardness and tribal wars saturating Western airwaves, the continent of Africa remains the most misunderstood region on Earth. That's why Guinean American Manthia Diawara's evenhanded and empirical look at the past, present, and future of West Africa is such a godsend.

Diawara--a film instructor at New York University--traveled to his native land in 1996 on a double mission: while making a documentary on the life of the Guinean freedom fighter and dictator Sekou Toure, he also set out to find a childhood friend. He is able to see Guinea with a nostalgia that doesn't turn a blind eye to the nation's faults, pointing out what needs to be done without falling prey to "Afro-pessimism." In one heartfelt passage, recalling his upbringing in revolutionary Guinea, Diawara writes: "My life began when the new nations were born, in the late 1950s. We had been full of hope then, determined to change Africa, to catch up quickly with the modern world, to show that black people could use their culture and civilization, as other people did, to lead them into modernity."

But, as Diawara relates throughout the book, that didn't happen. He painfully recounts how he and his family were forced to leave Guinea and how the country sank into a Marxist-oriented dictatorial nightmare. While not overlooking the horrible historical impact of the slave trade and European colonialism, Diawara also blames internal corruption and dangerous African ethnic customs, like female genital mutilation, for his country's underdevelopment. Ultimately, however, he remains confident that this people will one day ascend to their full political, economic, and cultural potential: "Our desire to be modernized has been awakened, and it cannot be denied. Women want liberation from traditional oppression; we all want access to education and material wealth; and we are tired of being ignored by the world." --Eugene Holley Jr.

Germany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949-1969

William Glenn Gray

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

a key part of the Cold War elucidated 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Gray's book does a masterful job of elucidating a key part of the Cold War. In looking at the Cold War in Europe, historians, both academic and popular/armchair, often overlook what America's allies were doing as they fought their own fronts in the larger Cold War. While NATO allies like Britain, Germany, and Italy were loyal supporters of the U.S., and they played a role in Washington's strategy, they also had their own agendas. Nowhere was this more important than in West Germany.

Unlike other American allies in Europe, West Germany had its own "personal" Cold War to fight (against East Germany). In doing so, however, its decisions could impact the larger global conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Additionally, West Germany was locked in a struggle with its own countrymen, in a sense. The "enemy" were fellow Germans.

Using a tremendous array of archival evidence, Gray demonstrates the origins, nuance, and development of West Germany's own Cold War strategy. His bibliography is very impressive. At one point, Amazon recommended buying this book together with Mary Sarotte's "Dealing with the Devil," also about Germany during the Cold War. The two books complement each other nicely, and the comparison is made even more intriguing by the fact that Sarotte and Gray both studied German history at Yale University, only a few years apart.

This book is necessary reading for the graduate student or scholar of the Cold War, and it is an excellent choice for the casual reader looking to go beyond the History Channel.

Editorial Review:

Gray examines West Germany's efforts to deny international acceptance of East Germany as a legitimate state following World War II, in the process telling an important story of the reassertion of Germany as an important power after the disaster of the war.

Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958 (Western African Studies)

Elizabeth Schmidt

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Editorial Review:

In September 1958, Guinea claimed its independence, rejecting a constitution that would have relegated it to junior partnership in the French Community. In all the French empire, Guinea was the only territory to vote “No.” Orchestrating the “No” vote was the Guinean branch of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), an alliance of political parties with affiliates in French West and Equatorial Africa and the United Nations trusts of Togo and Cameroon. Although Guinea’s stance vis-à-vis the 1958 constitution has been recognized as unique, until now the historical roots of this phenomenon have not been adequately explained.
Clearly written and free of jargon, Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea argues that Guinea’s vote for independence was the culmination of a decade-long struggle between local militants and political leaders for control of the political agenda. Since 1950, when RDA representatives in the French parliament severed their ties to the French Communist Party, conservative elements had dominated the RDA. In Guinea, local cadres had opposed the break. Victimized by the administration and sidelined by their own leaders, they quietly rebuilt the party from the base. Leftist militants, their voices muted throughout most of the decade, gained preeminence in 1958, when trade unionists, students, the party’s women’s and youth wings, and other grassroots actors pushed the Guinean RDA to endorse a “No” vote. Thus, Guinea’s rejection of the proposed constitution in favor of immediate independence was not an isolated aberration. Rather, it was the outcome of years of political mobilization by activists who, despite Cold War repression, ultimately pushed the Guinean RDA to the left.
The significance of this highly original book, based on previously unexamined archival records and oral interviews with grassroots activists, extends far beyond its primary subject. In illuminating the Guinean case, Elizabeth Schmidt helps us understand the dynamics of decolonization and its legacy for postindependence nation-building in many parts of the developing world.
Examining Guinean history from the bottom up, Schmidt considers local politics within the larger context of the Cold War, making her book suitable for courses in African history and politics, diplomatic history, and Cold War history.

Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere (Mestizo Spaces / Espaces Metisses)

Jean-Loup Amselle

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Editorial Review:

This innovative work seeks to reverse the perspective and reasoning of anthropology and to develop an alternative mode of conceiving culture that would not automatically privilege the colonizing West. That necessarily involves a critique of the “ethnological reason” that extracts elements from their context, aestheticizes them, and then uses their supposed differences to classify types of political, economic, or religious ensembles. Such “reason” yields classical oppositions like the State versus segmentary societies, market versus subsistence economies, and Islam or Christianity versus paganism.
As an alternative, the author opposes to exclusionary categories a “mestizo logic” that sees social phenomena as situated on a continuum and accentuates indistinction and the originary syncretism in all cultures and other ways of categorizing human life. The book’s rich source material is drawn from the author’s fifteen years of fieldwork and research in West Africa.
The opening chapters first treat the notion of ethnological reason—its history and ideological practices—then oppose to it the reality of cultural tension, the fact that conflicts and negotiations bring about transformations in the identity of collectivities. The following two chapters illustrate a real system of transformation, and question some basic concepts of political anthropology. The discussion continues in a more illustrative manner over the next two chapters, which present case studies of two West African societies that challenge typologies of political anthropology and ethnographic classification.
The last three chapters—on white paganism, cultural identities and cultural models, and understanding and acting—situate the debate within a wider historical framework of political and cultural confrontations. Who defines “ethnicities,” “identities,” “differences”? Where can one find them as pure essences witnessing to their own originary beings?

Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939-1958 (Social History of Africa Series)

Elizabeth Schmidt

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Editorial Review:

The Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) led Guinea to independence in 1958, advancing a wave of decolonization that ultimately swept across Africa. Schmidt attributes the RDA's overwhelming success to its ability to form a broad ethnic, class, and gender alliance, whose strength lay in its solid support among the non-literate masses. Key to the party's prowess was its focus on groups already engaged in struggle against the state: military veterans, urban workers, peasants, and women. It was their grievances that drove the nationalist agenda and their energies that were harnessed in the struggle for independence. The source of the party's strength was also the root of its greatest weakness. Disputes over ethnicity, class, and gender, and eruptions of ethnically based political violence, were a constant threat to the nationalist movement. Ultimately, it was the RDA's radical base that rejected junior partnership in the French Community, pushing the party leadership to endorse immediate independence. Based on previously unexamined archival records and oral interviews with rank-and-file RDA members, this book reinterprets nationalist history by approaching it from the bottom up. It illuminates the ways in which grassroots activists shaped the movement's vision, objectives, and strategies. The significance of Schmidt's work extends far beyond Guinea. It raises important theoretical and methodological issues that transform our understanding of anti-colonial nationalism in the non-Western world.

African Designs of the Congo, Nigeria, the Cameroons and the Guinea Coast (International Design Library)

Caren Caraway

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> History & Criticism -> Regional -> African

Editorial Review:

This collected edition places designs at the reader's fingertips. It includes all kinds of striking and authentic motifs - masks, votary figures, fetishes, textile designs, and others. An introduction to the art of each group is also included.

Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602) (Fontes Historiae Africanae Series Varia)

Pieter de Marees

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Editorial Review:

Pieter de Marees' history of Guinea--originally published in 1602--is one of the earliest detailed European descriptions of West African society and an essential reference for anyone interested in the precolonial period. De Marees wrote primarily about the Gold Coast (Ghana), but his work also covers Cape Verde (Senegal), Benin (Nigeria), and Cape Lopez (Gabon). This new translation includes full annotation and the original engravings.

A Biological Assessment of the Terrestrial Ecosystems of the Foret Classee du Pic de Fon, Simandou Range, South-eastern Republic of Guinea: RAP Bulletin ... International Rapid Assessment Program)

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Subjects -> Science -> Biological Sciences -> Biology -> General

Editorial Review:

The Simandou Range in the southeastern Republic of Guinea is an intriguing region for biological research with its diverse assortment of ecosystems and significant natural resources. This bilingual French-English volume reports on the findings of the 2002 Rapid Assessement Program (RAP) survey on the Pic de Fon in the Simandou Range. The RAP surveying team documented 797 species, several of which are brand new to science.

Kwame Nkrumah: The Conakry Years : His Life and Letters

June Milne

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