The book is a fascinating account of a surgeon "s odyssey into the spirit world of African healing. It is the story of his initiation as a sangoma and how his life has been changed and enriched by the experience. It includes photographs of the author "s training.

A collection of thirteen traditional tales from various regions of Africa, including "The Man with a Tree on His Head," "There's One Day for the Victim," and "The Two Swindlers."

"[W]hat is true of Rwanda is true in each of us; we all share in Africa." -- L'Harmattan "[This novel] comes closer than have many political scientists or historians to trying to understand why this small country... sank in such appalling violence." -- Radio France International In April of 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were killed in what would prove to be one of the swiftest, most terrifying killing sprees of the 20th century. In Murambi, The Book of Bones, Boubacar Boris Diop comes face to face with the chilling horror and overwhelming sadness of the tragedy. Now, the power of Diop's acclaimed novel is available to English-speaking readers through Fiona Mc Laughlin's crisp translation. The novel recounts the story of a Rwandan history teacher, Cornelius Uvimana, who was living and working in Djibouti at the time of the massacre. He returns to Rwanda to try to comprehend the death of his family and to write a play about the events that took place there. As the novel unfolds, Cornelius begins to understand that it is only our humanity that will save us, and that as a writer, he must bear witness to the atrocities of the genocide. From the novel: "If only by the way people are walking, you can see that tension is mounting by the minute. I can feel it almost physically. Everyone is running or at least hurrying about. I meet more and more passersby who seem to be walking around in circles. There seems to be another light in their eyes. I think of the fathers who have to face the anguished eyes of their children and who can't tell them anything. For them, the country has become an immense trap in the space of just a few hours. Death is on the prowl. They can't even dream of defending themselves. Everything has been meticulously prepared for a long time: the administration, the army, and the [militia] are going to combine forces to kill, if possible, every last one of them."

"What started out as a quest to find the mother of her beloved grandfather, became for Patricia Waak a revelation about the diversity of her family. It became, in fact, a spiritual journey as she visited cemeteries, courthouses, and archives from Accomack County, Virginia, to Goliad, Texas. Filled with transcriptions of old court cases, accounts from oral history, and the results of countless hours of research, she also invites us to participate in her own discovery through original poetry which introduces each chapter. Included are photographs, genealogical charts, maps, and copies of old documents."--Jacket.

Glenn Hinson focuses on a single gospel program and offers a major contribution to our understanding not just of gospel but of the nature of religious experience. A key feature of African American performance is the layering of performative voices and the constant shifting of performative focus. To capture this layering, Hinson demonstrates how all the parts of the gospel program work together to shape a single whole, joining speech and song, performer and audience, testimony, prayer, preaching, and singing into a seamless and multifaceted service of worship. Personal stories ground the discussion at every turn, while experiential testimony fuels the unfolding arguments. Fire in My Bones is an original exploration of experience and belief in a community of African American Christians, but it is also an exploration of African American aesthetics, the study of belief, and the ethnographic enterprise.

A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life “Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it. Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

"Splendid and important... Scientifically rigorous and written with a clarity and candor that create a gripping tale... [Böhme's] account of the history of Europe's lost apes is imbued with the sweat, grime, and triumph that is the lot of the fieldworker, and carries great authority." —Tim Flannery, The New York Review of Books In this "fascinating forensic inquiry into human origins" (Kirkus STARRED Review), a renowned paleontologist takes readers behind-the-scenes of one of the most groundbreaking archaeological digs in recent history. Somewhere west of Munich, paleontologist Madelaine Böhme and her colleagues dig for clues to the origins of humankind. What they discover is beyond anything they ever imagined: the twelve-million-year-old bones of Danuvius guggenmosi make headlines around the world. This ancient ape defies prevailing theories of human history—his skeletal adaptations suggest a new common ancestor between apes and humans, one that dwelled in Europe, not Africa. Might the great apes that traveled from Africa to Europe before Danuvius's time be the key to understanding our own origins? All this and more is explored in Ancient Bones. Using her expertise as a paleoclimatologist and paleontologist, Böhme pieces together an awe-inspiring picture of great apes that crossed land bridges from Africa to Europe millions of years ago, evolving in response to the challenging conditions they found. She also takes us behind the scenes of her research, introducing us to former theories of human evolution (complete with helpful maps and diagrams), and walks us through musty museum overflow storage where she finds forgotten fossils with yellowed labels, before taking us along to the momentous dig where she and the team unearthed Danuvius guggenmosi himself—and the incredible reverberations his discovery caused around the world. Praise for Ancient Bones: "Readable and thought-provoking. Madelaine Böhme is an iconoclast whose fossil discoveries have challenged long-standing ideas on the origins of the ancestors of apes and humans." —Steve Brusatte, New York Times-bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs "An inherently fascinating, impressively informative, and exceptionally thought-provoking read." —Midwest Book Review "An impressive introduction to the burgeoning recalibration of paleoanthropology." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Leading New Zealand anti-apartheid campaigner Trevor Richards has written this history of New Zealand's contribution to the fight against racism and apartheid in South Africa. The story of the protests is vividly told - but it is not an account of one man's battle against the system - "it is a serious history of a crucial part of our recent past."

Bones, Stones and Molecules provides some of the best evidence for resolving the debate between the two hypotheses of human origins. The debate between the 'Out of Africa' model and the 'Multiregional' hypothesis is examined through the functional and developmental processes associated with the evolution of the human skull and face and focuses on the significance of the Australian record. The book analyzes important new discoveries that have occurred recently and examines evidence that is not available elsewhere. Cameron and Groves argue that the existing evidence supports a recent origin for modern humans from Africa. They also specifically relate these two theories to interpretations of the origins of the first Australians. The book provides an up-to-date interpretation of the fossil, archaeological and the molecular evidence, specifically as it relates to Asia, and Australia in particular. Readily accessible to the layperson and professional Provides concise coverage of current scientific evidence Presents a robust computer-generated model of human speciation over the last 7 million years Well illustrated with figures and photographs of important fossil specimens Presents a synthesis of great ape and human evolution

What are the right questions to ask when seeking out the spirit of a nation? In November, 2017, the people of Zimbabwe took to the streets in an unprecedented alliance with the military. Their goal, to restore the legacy of Chimurenga, the liberation struggle, and wrest their country back from more than 30 years of Robert Mugabe's rule. In an essay that combines bold reportage, memoir, and critical analysis, Zimbabwean novelist and journalist Panashe Chigumadzi reflects on the "coup that was not a coup," the telling of history and manipulation of time and the ancestral spirts of two women--her own grandmother and Mbuya Nehanda, the grandmother of the nation.