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Medical historian Randall Packard's far-ranging narrative traces the natural and social forces that help malaria spread and make it deadly. He finds that war, land development, crumbling health systems, and globalization -- coupled with climate change and changes in the distribution and flow of water -- create conditions in which malaria's carrier mosquitoes thrive. The combination of these forces, Packard contends, makes the tropical regions today a perfect home for the disease.
Authoritative, fascinating, and eye-opening, this short history of malaria concludes with policy recommendations for improving control strategies and saving lives.
more books on Malaria
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The House at Sugar Beach is an astonishing and moving memoir about growing up in Liberia during a violent civil war. Helene Cooper is the daughter of one of Liberia's elite families, but after a coup threw her people out of power she moved to the United States, eventually becoming a journalist. In The House at Sugar Beach, Cooper delivers personal memoir, historical perspective, and journalistic reporting in one book that you won't be able to put down. - About.com
Cooper, a reporter with the New York Times had been on assignment embedded with U.S. soldiers in Iraq when her military vehicle was in a terrifying accident. Lying in the Iraqi desert amidst the wreckage of her Humvee, Cooper had the realization: "I shouldn’t die here—If I’m going to die in a war, it should be in my own country."
more Liberia books
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Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta takes a graphic look
at the profound cost of oil exploitation in West Africa. Featuring images by
world-renowned photojournalist Ed Kashi and text by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka,
prominent Nigerian journalists, human rights activists, and University of California
at Berkeley professor Michael Watts, this book traces the 50-year history of Nigeria’s
oil interests and the resulting environmental degradation and community conflicts that
have plagued the region.
Now one of the major suppliers of U.S. oil, Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of
oil in the world. Accompanied by powerful writing by some of the most
prominent public intellectuals and critics in contemporary Nigeria,
Kashi’s photographs capture local leaders, armed militants, oil workers, and villagers,
all of whose fates are inextricably linked. His exclusive coverage bears
witness to the ongoing struggles of local communities, illustrating the paradox of
poverty in the midst of plenty. more books on Nigeria and oil
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"We were part of a worldwide movement that continues today to redress the economic and social injustices that kill body, mind, and spirit. No Easy Victories makes clear that our lives and fortunes around the globe are indeed linked." - Nelson Mandela
"No Easy Victories tells the compelling stories behind the U.S. anti-apartheid movement in the voices of those who were there. It reminds us that movements emerge over time, built on hard work by movement foot soldiers and on personal networks that bridge generations and continents." - Danny Glover, actor, activist, chair of TransAfrica Forum
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Technology trends that are lowering prices for accessing and producing information are fundamentally
changing the opportunities for African countries to compensate for their structural disadvantages
in the world economy.The phenomenon Benkler describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice.
But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today's emerging networked information environment.
Benkler's book is a fundamental guide to the new realities of the information age. Click on the box to the left to buy it at a discount or read it on-line on the
author's website
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Pick almost any global issue threatening the future of humanity, and you will find that Africa and Africans are receiving a horrendously disproportionate share of the damage. Poverty, war, the global AIDS pandemic, climate change, rising dependence on costly fossil fuels: Africa is on the frontlines in every case. As a result, Africa also stands to gain significantly from efforts to confront these looming global problems.
There is no better overview of global environmental and resource issues than Lester Brown's new book,
which not only reports detailed research on the problems but also outlines plausible and doable steps
to confront them—if there is political will. Click on the box to the left to buy it at a discount or read it on-line on the
Earth Policy Institute website
