Constitutional Rights in Two Worlds: South Africa and the United States by Mark Kende; Cambridge University Press, 2009, 317 pp, $35.99"A fascinating, original, and genuinely important book, illuminating not only the South Africa and American constitution, but constitutional theory and practice in general."
--------Cass Sunstein, Head of the White House/s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial Period to 2008 by Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo, Weaver Press; Harare, 296pp $30.95"Becoming Zimbabwe is the first comprehensive history of Zimbabwe, spanning the years from 850 to 2008. In 1997, the Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Morgan Tsuangiral, expressed the need for more open and critical process of writing history in Zimbabwe... a profoundly new history of Zimbabwe that tears apart all of the old certainties."
-------David Monroe, Associate Professor of Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, and author of the World Bank: Development, Poverty, Hegemony
Genuine Intellectuals: Academic and Social Responsibilities in Africa by Bernard Nsokika Fonlon; Lang Ripcig, Cameroon: 172pp $27.99"Bernard Fonlon... believed in public service with selfless dedication and unwavering integrity... He was educated in the classical mould of Europe, yet he remained close to home in his daily life."
-------Professor Aliko Songolo, UC Irvine
Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men by John A. Rich, MD; M.P.H. The Johns Hopkins University Press"John Rich, who has devoted so much of his career to the study of violence -- especially in men of color -- challenges us to see beyond the injuries and the anger and to hear and appreciate the plight of these men and to understand that they, like us, seek a place of safety in their lives."
-------David Satcher, MD, Ph.D., 16th Surgeon General of the United States
Nairobi to Shenzhen By Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo"As with the president's best-selling memoir, 'Dreams From My Father," Ndesanjo's book delves into growing up as a mixed-race child and into a psyche shaped by an erratic father. 'My father beat my mother and my father beat me,' Ndesandjo told the Associated Press...'I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father's voice and my mother shouting.' Although strictly autobiographical, the novel skips over the part where the protagonists half brother is elected president of the Uniterd States. 'I didn't want to take on any strong political themes in this book,' Ndesandjo said. His mention of the president: 'I think my brother's team is doing an extraordinary job.' Barrack Obama Sr. died in 1982 and the half brothers did not know each other as children.'"
-------Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
Terrorism: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy by Joseph Zulaika; The University of Chicago Press, $20.00
"This is by far the best book on terrorism I have read for many years. In its systematic deconstruction of counter-terrorism ideology and its call to take terrosrist subjectivity seriously, this is a book of tremendous importance. Terrorism is incredibly rich in analysis and insight - I have no doubt that readers will be mining it for new ideas for many years to come."
-------Richard Jackson, Abenystwyth
Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America byHilary J. Moss, The University of Chicago Press, $37.50
"I cannot think of any other book that is like Scooling Citizens, which makes an important contribution both to the historiography of African Americans and to the history of education in America. Well-written and well-argued, this book is an original contribution to scholarship."
-------Shane White, author of Stories of Freedom in Black New York
Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yurus, with Karl Weber; Public Affairs, 282pp, $14.95
"This has been the message for the past twenty-six years of Muhammad Yurus, the Bangladesh economics professor, Nobel Prize winner, and recent recipient of the United States Medal of Freedom, who founded the Grameen Bank. Gramir pioneered the concept of micrcredit, the granting of small loans to people who otherwise would have no access to money to run a business. These, historically, have been the poorest of the poor; in Bangladesh, Grameen now even loans money to street beggars."
-------Sue Halpern, a scholar in residence at Middlebury. Her most recent book is "Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research."
Race, Incarceration, and American Values by Glenn C. Loury, with Pamela S. Karlan, Temmie Shelby, and Loic Wacquant; Boston Review?MIT Press, 86pp, $14.95
"The most dramatic effects of this incarceration are concentrated on the most disadvantaged -- those who are not only African-Americans or Latino, but also poor, uneducated, and living in highly segregated ghettos. While roughly 60 percent of black high school dropouts have spent time in prison, only 5 percent of college-educated African-Americans have done so... The correlation of race and crime in the publics mind reinforces prejudice that affects every African-American."
-------David Cole, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Highlife Music in West Africa by Sonny Oti, Matthouse Press, Nigeria, 288pp
Dancing With Life: Tales from the Township by Christopher Mlalazi, Amabooks Publishers, Zimbabwe, 2009, 88pp
"Christopher Mlalazi may well be the most promising young writer in Zimbabwe today."
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 477pp, $30.00
"Armstrong's rise was not easy. He performed about 300 nights a year and lived out of a suitcase. In the early days, he bounced back and forth between Chicago and New York, endured Jim Crow humiliations during tours of the South and struggled to pursue music without getting overwhelmed by the details of running a jazzchestra. (Eventually, he turned the business side over to white managers.)
Still, after revolutionizing jazz of black 1920s, Armstrong was in the vanguard of black entertainers who crossed over to white mass culture, leading an integrated band, appearing in movies and becoming a regular first on radio and then on television."
-------Scott Martelle, an Irvine, California-based journalist and critic reports from New York for the Los Angeles Times Book Review
