African Wars

Lieutenant Bill Fraser and the six SAS men he led were listed as Missing in Action (MIA) after their failure to return from a raid. Nine weeks later they emerged from a death-defying sojourn across the Sahara Desert, after evading and confounding the enemy.

In late January 1879, following news of the terrible disaster to befall British forces at Isandlwana, Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood, commanding officer of the northern No. 4 Column, withdraws his forces to Khambula, near the Natal and Transvaal borders. Adding to their woes, the southern No. 1 Column finds itself trapped under siege at the abandoned mission station of Eshowe. The general officer commanding, Lord Chelmsford, orders Wood to continue harassing the Zulus, keeping the pressure off their central and southern forces while he rallies reinforcements to relieve Eshowe.

Most histories of the US Army in World War II view the Mediterranean Theater of Operations primarily as a deadly training ground for very green forces, where lessons learned on the beaches of Oran, in the hills of the Kasserine Pass area, and at the collapse of the Tunis bridgehead all contributed to later success in Western Europe. Steven Barry, however, contends that victory in the MTO would not have materialized without the leadership of battalion-level commanders. They operated at a high level, despite the lack of combat experience for themselves and their troops.

By the mid-19th century, other European powers became interested not only in the exploration of Africa, but the exploitation of it, especially once the German Empire unified after the Franco-Prussian War. This began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of chartered companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets, and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European colonies.

These players are not angels. No angels would go where they go, nor do what they do to survive. Often, these are the people on the front line of discovery, taking giant steps in vicious lands, where life is cheap, and the rewards, should they be found, can be extensive. Anthropologists shudder at the very idea of interfering with a native or indigenous people, but when the rewards are on the other side of those pesky savages, well, the opinions can change, all right. But survival can come at a price, and only the strong might make it. Life is what happens while you make your plans… Enjoy....

Godfrey Mwakikagile looks at the African post-colonial state and the challenges it faces. He contends that it is structurally flawed and does not reflect African realities. It is an oppressive machinery and an apparatus of power to serve the interests of the ruling class and the elite at the expense of ordinary citizens and the masses. And it has retained the institutional structure of the colonial state instead of undergoing fundamental transformation to become truly African. Mwakikagile focuses on a number of countries providing case studies whose relevance is continental in scope. He ...

By the end of the Civil War, nearly half a million slaves had taken refuge behind Union lines in what became known as "contraband camps". These were crowded, dangerous places, yet some 12 to 15 percent of the Confederacy's slave population took almost unimaginable risks to reach them, and they became the first places Northerners came to know former slaves en masse.

The United States in the mid-1800s boiled with conflict and promise. The bloody Civil War raged. A ruminating President sat in the White House. William Gould Raymond (“W.G.”) was as complicated as the times. His life a mosaic of faith, addiction, health setbacks, his sprawling family, service as a Union Army officer, and then as a Lincoln-appointed hospital chaplain. W.G.’s place in history, though, stands as the initial commanding officer responsible for raising what would become the 1st United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) of the District of Columbia.

From lesser-known state figures to the ancestors of Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, and James Meredith, Mississippi Zion brings the voices and experiences of everyday people to the forefront and reveals a history dictated by people rather than eras. Author Evan Howard Ashford, a native of the county, examines how African Americans in Attala County, after the Civil War, shaped economic, social, and political politics as a non-majority racial group. At the same time, Ashford provides a broader view of Black life occurring throughout the state during the same period.

A Plausible Man unfolds as a historical detective story, as Susanna Ashton combs obscure records for evidence of Jackson's remarkable flight from slavery to freedom, his quest to liberate his enslaved family, and his emergence as an international advocate for abolition. This fresh and original work takes us through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the restoration of white supremacy-where we last glimpse Jackson losing his freedom again on a Southern chain gang.

A Jewish family was forced to lodge an SS officer. What could possibly go wrong? Yuliya lived through two great wars in an ancient country which never really became her home. Her Jewish family had a unique occupation which over time became as dangerous as the weapons of war. Still, she underestimated her contribution in preventing a German victory in the North African Campaign. It’s a World War II story about love and destiny gold and figs - a story that had to be told. Yuliya recounts her extraordinary tale of how it all happened.

South Boston-native Ned Tobin has all the luck. Alive after the Somme, now an officer, he meets, beds and falls in love with the alluring Adèle Chéreaux, a half-English lycée teacher who gives herself fully to Ned. Their love affair is suddenly upended in 1917 when Ned is called home and Adèle flees the last German advance of the First World War. Harlem lawyer Chester Dawkins is a fine young man and a devoted brother. He dutifully joins a new regiment anxious to fight for their chance at valor in the face of deep-rooted racism. Meanwhile, his sister, Lena, is left at home to shoulder a ...

Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage.

The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! explores Toronto’s role as a destination for thousands of freedom seekers before the American Civil War. This new edition traces pathways taken by people, enslaved and free, who courageously made the trip north in search of liberty and offers new biographies, images, and information, some of which is augmented by a 2015 archaeological dig in downtown Toronto.

In a nation teetering on the edge, one man must unravel the truth before it's too late. A British diplomat is kidnapped in Tunisia, and a web of intrigue unravels, revealing a sinister plot that threatens to plunge the nation into chaos. Peter Craig, a British police advisor, is in Tunis at the behest of the Tunisian government to lend his expertise on security matters. However, within a day of his arrival, he's caught in a whirlwind of clandestine encounters, including an unsettling kidnapping. As Craig delves deeper, he uncovers a network of revolutionary groups, each with their own ...

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis, who was abducted from Africa on the last 'Black Cargo' ship to arrive in the United States. Of the millions of men, women and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

In The Warrior Code, entrepreneur, philanthropist, reality star, and retired gunnery sergeant Tee Marie Hanible serves up 11 principles to awaken your inner badass and thrive in the face of adversity. With insightful honesty and wisdom and set against the backdrop of Tee’s life, The Warrior Code will help you understand that things can beat us back from realizing our true potential...but the key is finding the way to realize one’s own innate strength.

Nothing but Freedom examines the aftermath of emancipation in the South and the restructuring of society by which the former slaves gained, beyond their freedom, a new relation to the land they worked on, to the men they worked for, and to the government they lived under. Taking a comparative approach, Eric Foner examines Reconstruction in the southern states against the experience of Haiti, where a violent slave revolt was followed by the establishment of an undemocratic government.

On the morning of July 16, 1964, a white police officer in New York City shot and killed a black teenager, James Powell. Two nights later, a peaceful demonstration in Harlem degenerated into violent protests. During the next week, thousands of rioters looted stores from Brooklyn to Rochester and pelted police with bottles and rocks. Michael W. Flamm draws on personal interviews and delves into the archives to move briskly from the streets of New York, where black activists like Bayard Rustin tried in vain to restore peace, to the corridors of the White House.

Although news of Christians being killed overseas hits major media outlets from time to time, the news quickly fades away while our fellow believers continue to suffer. Johnnie Moore, as he has done before, wants to awaken the church and American politicians to the daily horrors happening to Christians, focusing this time on Africa. While the world has been fixated on jihadist threats in the Middle East, terrorists from Nigeria to Kenya have had free reign to massacre on a scale far beyond that of the terrorists in Iraq and Syria.