In An African Classical Age, Christopher Ehret brings to light 1,400 years of social and economic transformation across Africa from Uganda and Kenya in the north to Natal and the Cape in the south. The book offers a much-needed portrait of this region during a crucial period in which basic features of precolonial African societies and cultures emerged. Combining the most recent findings of archaeology and historical linguistics, the author demonstrates that, from 1000 B.C. through the fourth century A.D., eastern and southern African history was invigorated by technological change and intricately reshaped by the clash of distinctive cultures. Contrary to common presumption, he argues, Africans of this period were not isolated actors on their own historical stage, but direct and indirect participants in the major trends of contemporary world history, such as the Iron Age and the first great rise of long-distance commercial enterprise. In telling their important story, Ehret shows how powerful yet delicate a tool language evidence can be in detecting both the details and the long-term contours of the past. The culmination of twenty-five years of research, this sweeping historical survey fundamentally challenges how we view the place not only of eastern and southern Africa, but of Africa as a whole, in the early eras of world history. Now available in paperback, An African Classical Age has become an essential resource for scholars of linguistics, archaeology, world history, and African studies.

Looking for adventure, Vilem Nemec traveled from Prague to Cairo. During his Twenty-Five Years in Africa, Vilem began to see life more like a native than a tourist. Unfamiliar with Arabic when he arrived, he struggled to learn it quickly, working menial jobs to support himself. Vilem not only learned to speak, read, and write Arabic, but he was able to communicate with tribal natives in many remote areas. His travels took him to remote places in Somalia, Abbyssinia, Sudan, and Sinai. Earning respect as a pharmacist and veterinarian, Vilem came into contact with many influential leaders. His memoir is peppered with rich, historical details explained from a firsthand observer and filled with stories of friends—German, Egyptian, Czech—from a woman running from an arranged marriage to a writer influencing Aida. Vilem's own adventures are no less exciting. Whether he's capturing a live caracal or wooing harem women, his stories present a vivid description of Twenty-Five Years in Africa from 1884 to 1910.

In this fascinating exploration of the cultural models of manhood, When Men Are Women examines the unique world of the nomadic Gabra people, a camel-herding society in northern Kenya. Gabra men denigrate women and feminine things, yet regard their most prestigious men as women. As they grow older, all Gabra men become d'abella, or ritual experts, who have feminine identities. Wood's study draws from structuralism, psychoanalytic theory, and anthropology to probe the meaning of opposition and ambivalence in Gabra society. When Men Are Women provides a multifaceted view of gender as a cultural construction independent of sex, but nevertheless fundamentally related to it. By turning men into women, the Gabra confront the dilemmas and ambiguities of social life. Wood demonstrates that the Gabra can provide illuminating insight into our own culture's understanding of gender and its function in society.