History & Geography

Sankara

2,500.00

The African Renaissance is the concept that African people and nations shall overcome the current challenges confronting the continent and achieve cultural, scientific, and economic renewal.

At thirty-three, in 1983, Thomas Sankara came to power with a goal of eliminating corruption and eliminating the vestiges colonial domination. He immediately launched one of the most ambitious programmes for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent. Sankara was assassinated by troops led by Blaise Compaoré in 1987.

It is this Thomas Sankara, held by some as one of Africa’s foremost statesmen, and derided by a small minority as a ruthless dictator, that Jude Idada sets to examine in this play. Everyone interested in history and the subject of an African Renaissance should read this play written by Jude Idada

Witness To Justice

4,000.00

Witness to Justice is a personal account of the author’s time on ‘The Judicial Commission for the investigation of Human Rights Violation’ to which he was appointed by President Olusegun Obasanjo in June 1999. An incisive look at the systematic devaluation of human life that took place in Nigeria during the years of military rule, along with the culture of impunity that emerged over that period.

Private Island

4,500.00

In a little over a generation the bones and sinews of the British economy – rail, energy, water, postal services, municipal housing – have been sold to remote, unaccountable private owners, often from overseas. In a series of brilliant portraits the award-winning novelist and journalist James Meek shows how Britain’s common wealth became private, and the impact it has had on us all: from the growing shortage of housing to spiralling energy bills.

Meek explores the human stories behind the incremental privatization of the nation over the last three decades. He shows how, as our national assets are sold, ordinary citizens are handed over to private tax-gatherers, and the greatest burden of taxes shifts to the poorest. In the end, it is not only public enterprises that have become private property, but we ourselves.

Urgent, powerfully written and deeply moving, this is a passionate anatomy of the state of the nation: of what we have lost and what losing it cost us – the rent we must pay to exist on this private island.

Heroes Of Discovery

4,500.00

Learn all about amazing inventors throughout history in a graphic novel format!

Learn about the innovative heroes who changed the world we live in with their inventions: from Johannes Gutenberg and Thomas Edison to Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Katherine Johnson, and more. Graphic novels are all the rage, and there are lots of great reasons why. Kids love reading them since the images reinforce the story and make it move at the perfect pace. Our Graphic Greats series combines the stories of incredible people with graphic illustrations that amplify the meaning of the story and keep kids riveted to each book. It’s perfect for dyed-in-the-wool readers as well as those who might otherwise never read for enjoyment. Exciting stories and inspiring illustrations of heroic adventurers, innovators, dreamers, and doers make these the kinds of books that kids will return to again and again.

Beneath the Tamarind Tree

5,000.00

In the early morning of April 14, 2014, the militant Islamic group Boko Haram violently burst into the small town of Chibok, Nigeria, and abducted 276 girls from their school dorm rooms. From poor families, these girls were determined to make better lives for themselves, but pursuing an education made them targets, resulting in one of the most high-profile abductions in modern history. While the Chibok kidnapping made international headlines, and prompted the #BringBackOurGirls movement, many unanswered questions surrounding that fateful night remain about the girls’ experiences in captivity, and where many of them are today.

In Beneath the Tamarind Tree, Isha Sesay tells this story as no one else can. Originally from Sierra Leone, Sesay led CNN’s Africa reporting for more than a decade, and she was on the front lines when this story broke. With unprecedented access to a group of girls who made it home, she follows the journeys of Priscilla, Saa, and Dorcas in an uplifting tale of sisterhood and survival.

Sesay delves into the Nigerian government’s inadequate response to the kidnapping, exposes the hierarchy of how the news gets covered, and synthesizes crucial lessons about global national security. She also reminds us of the personal sacrifice required of journalists to bring us the truth at a time of growing mistrust of the media. Beneath the Tamarind Tree is a gripping read and a story of resilience with a soaring message of hope at its core, reminding us of the ever-present truth that progress for all of us hinges on unleashing the potential of women.

Origin Story

5,000.00

Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day — and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence?

These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of “Big History,” the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. In Origin Story, Christian takes readers on a wild ride through the entire 13.8 billion years we’ve come to know as “history.” By focusing on defining events (thresholds), major trends, and profound questions about our origins, Christian exposes the hidden threads that tie everything together — from the creation of the planet to the advent of agriculture, nuclear war, and beyond.

With stunning insights into the origin of the universe, the beginning of life, the emergence of humans, and what the future might bring, Origin Story boldly reframes our place in the cosmos.

A Deal With The Devil

5,000.00

In this spellbinding true story, a pair of award-winning CNN investigative journalists track down the mysterious French psychic at the center of an international scam targeting the elderly and emotionally vulnerable, resulting in an exposé of one of the longest running cons in history.

While investigating financial crimes for CNN Money, Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken were intrigued by reports that elderly Americans were giving away thousands of dollars to mail-in schemes. With a little digging, they soon discovered a shocking true story.

Victims received personalized letters from a woman who, claiming amazing psychic powers, convinced them to send money in return for riches, good health, and good fortune. The predatory scam has continued unabated for decades, raking in more than $200 million in the United States and Canada alone—with investigators from all over the world unable to stop it. And at the center of it all—an elusive French psychic named Maria Duval.

Based on the five-part series that originally appeared on CNN’s website in 2016 and was seen by more than three million people, A Deal with the Devil picks up where the series left off as Ellis and Hicken reveal more bizarre characters, follow new leads, close in on Maria Duval, and connect the dots in an edge-of-your-seat journey across the US to England and France. A Deal with the Devil is a fascinating, thrilling search for the truth and is long-form investigative journalism at its best.

A Story of Heroes and Epics: The History of Football in Nigeria

5,000.00

For a country where heroes are hardly celebrated and epic football is almost forgotten, this book takes the reader on an enthralling historical excursion. The most detailed and certainly the best written account of the pre-Independence history of Nigerian football. Wiebe Boer has combined facts and figures with fluid prose in delivering a most engaging narration.

Arts Of Being Yoruba

5,000.00

Adélékè Adéeko documents Yorùbá patterns of behavior and articulates a philosophy of how to be Yorùbá in this innovative study. As he focuses on historical writings, Ifá divination practices, the use of proverbs in contemporary speech, photography, gendered ideas of dressing well, and the formalities of ceremony and speech at celebratory occasions

Honour For Sale

5,000.00

The murder of Dele Giwa remains on the infamous list of Nigeria’s unsolved murders. More than twenty-five years after Nigeria’s first ever parcel bomb ended the life of one of the country’s most colourful investigative journalists, the case has refused to be laid to rest. In Honour for Sale, Debo Basorun, with the insight of his proximity to some of the dramatis personae, examines the lurid circumstances of this controversial murder. He unearths a web of ‘intrigue and treachery, clannishness and base humanity’ of some of the men in uniform who, only recently, ran the affairs of the country.

Nigeria: A New History Of A Turbulent Century

5,000.00

Known as the African Giant, Nigeria’s story is complex and often contradictory. How, despite the ravages of colonialism, civil war, ongoing economic disappointment and most recently the Boko Haram insurgency, has the country managed to stay together for a hundred years? Why, despite an abundance of oil, mineral and agricultural wealth, have so many of its people remained in poverty? These are the key questions explored by Richard Bourne in this remarkable and wide-ranging account of Nigeria’s history, from its creation in 1914 to the historic 2015 elections and beyond.

Featuring a wealth of original research and interviews, this is an essential insight into the shaping of a country where, despite the seemingly dashed optimism that was raised at independence, there remains hope ‘the Nigeria project’ may still succeed.

American Sketches

5,000.00

One of America’s most versatile writers, author of bestselling biographies such as Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, has assembled a gallery of portraits of (mostly) Americans that celebreate genius, talent, and versatility, and traces his own education as a writer and biographer.

In this collection of essays, the brilliant, acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson reflects on lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and other interesting characters he has chronicled both as biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, but that is not the secret to their success. They had qualities that were even more rare, such as imagination and true curiousity.

Isaacson also reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges for journalism in the digital age.

He also offers loving tributes to his hometown of New Orleans, which offers many of the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, who was an early mentor. In an anecdotal and personal way, Isaacson describes the joys of writing and the way that tales about the lives of fascinating people can enlighten our own lives.

The Mafia

5,000.00

Drawing on two decades of original research and personal experience, multi award-winning writer the late George Carpozi Jr and William Balsamo, great nephew of the first godfather, Don Guiseppe ‘Battista’ Balsamo, trace the Mafia’s beginnings from an underground patriotic society which sprang up six hundred years ago in Sicily, through the group of Italian immigrants – the Black Hand – who savagely tore control of New York’s waterfronts away from the Irish racketeers, to the Mob which went on to run organised crime throughout Italy and America, and whose insidious influence even reached into a presidential administration.

The Mafia has long been one of the most mythical and misunderstood criminal organisations. This book, with filmic detail, behind-closed-doors dialogue and first-hand story-telling, gets deeper inside it than ever before.

Compulsively chilling, The Mafia: The First 100 Years reads like the best crime fiction, yet is the terrifying, deadly truth.

I Am Madam X

5,000.00

When John Singer Sargent unveiled Madame X — his famous portrait of American beauty Virginie Gautreau — at the 1884 Paris Salon, its subject’s bold pose and provocative dress shocked the public and the critics, smashing Sargent’s dreams of a Paris career.

In this remarkable novel, Gioia Diliberto tells Virginie’s story, drawing on the sketchy historical facts to re-create Virginie’s tempestuous personality and the captivating milieu of nineteenth-century Paris. Born in New Orleans and raised on a lush plantation, Virginie fled to France during the Civil War, where she was absorbed into the fascinating and wealthy world of grand ballrooms, dressmakers’ salons, and artists’ ateliers. Even before Sargent painted her portrait, Virginie’s reputation for promiscuity and showy self-display made her the subject of vicious Paris gossip.

Immersing the reader in Belle Epoque Paris, I Am Madame X is a compulsively readable and richly imagined novel illuminating the struggle between Virginie and Sargent over the outcome of a painting that changed their lives and affected the course of art history.

The Innocent Man

5,500.00

In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death—in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life, and let a true killer go free.

Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, The Innocent Man reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book no American can afford to miss.

The Tyranny Of Oil

5,500.00

In the tradition of the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Antonia Juhasz’s The Tyranny of Oil offers a chilling exposé of the modern American oil industry and its dire abuse of power. A leading international trade and finance policy expert and the author of The Bush Agenda, Juhasz presents eye-opening truths about a potentially catastrophic global energy crisis that only promises to get much worse in the coming years—and provides possible solutions for meaningful change.

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