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Originally posted by cheekyferret:
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation...

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Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South

By Ira Berlin



This book is about the mysterious societies of not only free men and women but slaves and ex-slaves as well. I never new there was such a desire in the antebellum South for autonomous black societies (!) - (churches, schools, and other) but am not surprised at the white hysteria any apparent black organization caused! The above pic is random and is NOT the book cover. Haven’t really read the book, it just happened to catch my eye a few months ago and so I jotted it down in my notebook of books.

This book raised my level of interest in slaves and free African Americans in slavery and post slavery American society.

Before I saw this book, I had already read through this masterpiece:



Still I Rise: A cartoon history of African Americans by Roland Owen Laird, Jr. with Taneshia Nash Laird

"Permeating this encyclopedic research is Posro's recognition of the beauty, resilience, and spiritual endurance of black Americans." --Charles Johnson

Every American and anyone else who would like to read a thourough record of AA history needs to read this book.

At the same time (during the cold months of Dec and January) I was also reading Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader and Centuries of Greatness: The West African Kingdoms by Philip Koslow.

Let’s start with Centuries of Greatness.



This was an excellent read especially for beginners in West African history. It briefly covers pre-historic times and the environmental challenges that shaped the region’s humanity and continues on through the 19th Century. It covers a good variety of African settlements.

The only one discrepancy I had with the book, is how this one paragraph was worded:

quote:

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”Despite the example of Nok, West Africa’s location caused it to lag behind the eastern and northern regions of the continent. While West Africans were still living in farming settlements, the Egyptians, in contact with the great river-valley civilizations of the Near East, such as Babylon and Assyria, enjoyed a culture of high sophistication under their rulers, the pharaohs. The communities of North Africa, propelled into close contact with the Romans and Phoenicians by their position on the Mediterranean Sea, were large and prosperous by the 4th Century B.C.
“West Africa was separated from these civilizations by the Sahara, a 3-million-square-mile expanse of land that, by around 2,000 B.C., had dried to desert. This geographic barrier did not prevent the development of West Africa during the Iron Age.” (20)

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I thought it was informative but was also a bit out-dated.

Though, this book appears to have been irritant to some Westerners (Eurocentrists?) who have read it! (<- referring especially to the more critical of these user reviews – which there were very few of)

From the inside covers of the one at my library:

quote:

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“From the primeval cataclysms that formed the continent to the civil wars and genocide that ravage it today – a work of startling grandeur and scope that provides a remarkable panoramic history of Africa, by a deeply intelligent writer who has spent most of his adult life there.

We all originated in Africa, and no matter what our race, our most ancient relationship is with that continent. Reader tells us the story of our earliest ancestors’ adaptation to Africa’s ferocious obstacles of jungle, river, and desert, and of how its unique array of animals, plants, viruses, and parasites has over millions of years helped and hindered human progress to a degree unknown any where else on Earth.

Illustrated with many of the authors own beautiful photographs, which capture the staggering diversity of human experience in every part of the continent – from the inland estuaries of the Niger and the rain forests of the Equator, to the deserts of the North and the high veld of the South – this book weaves together into a richly fluent narrative the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, the changing patterns of indigenous life over the millennia, the complex history of slaver, the devastating impact of European settlers, and the fragile emergence of independent nations. John Reader has given us an extraordinary biography of an infinitely fascinating continent.”

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^ A nice Journey through the Ancient Empires.

These are what I’ve been reading within the last year. In addition, I’ve scanned a number of books on Ancient Egypt, including one on the Great Pyramid’s construction, (I may post in that thread later), but mostly centered on other aspects of Kemet’s culture, history, and society in general.

One book I read (got through most of it) because of its mention on ES: The Mismeasure of Man by Steven Jay Gould <- Look at them wiki-monkeys squirm! [citations needed - lol] All I can say is that it is an extremely useful book for anyone slightly interested in the rather precarious methodology of racial science in the past.



^^
 

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^I've heard great things about that book and what it relates concerning the economic situation of Western vs .. say .. Africa .. heard about it from this board and real-life.

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Two of my favorite books that deal with people and happen to be foremost in my mind were:

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan

These books aren't books I'm currently reading or have read within the last 12-6 months at least (like all the others I've mentioned) - read 'em a while ago.





The former [Blink] is all about the generally unrecognized - but documented and backed by statistical studies – very powerful mechanism that is the human intuition and the sub-conscious mind.

Saving Fish from Drowning – a group of tourists inadvertently end up on an enlightening adventure in Asia (Myanmar/Burma). Most notably to me is that for anyone who reads this book it is made abundantly clear that we are all of the same mind and that regardless of tribe, governmental affiliation, sex, age or ethnicity, we all share something in common. One may not expect it to be so but: This book is very straight-forward / down-to-earth and one of the realest books to me.

After the first 30-50 pages of this book I flew through it and barely remember what books I read before it.

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“Amy Tan has created an almost magical adventure that, page by page, becomes a metaphor for human relationships.”
–Isabel Allende

“With humor, ruthlessness, and wild imagination, Tan has reaped [a] fantastic tale of human longings and (of course) their consequences.”
–Elle

“A bookthat’s easy to read and hard to forget.”
–Newsweek

“Amy Tan is among our great storytellers.”
–The New York Times Book Review

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And back to the recent -going one year back- stuff:

How could I almost forget, the book I purchased and ended up reading (and suitably) during the cold of Winter.



Though dealing with Apartheid South Africa, the thing that stands out to me is that the optimistic quality of the flavor of the book. (It's an auto-Biography of a black South African)

This book was so epic and monumental infact that a random idea I just got in my head says that current forum discourse would be much better quality if people just posted different parts of the book, with no certain cohesion even. If you haven't, go and read it. Now.

Thaat's iit.
 

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Originally posted by Alive-(What Box):
Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South

By Ira Berlin



This book is about the mysterious societies of not only free men and women but slaves and ex-slaves as well. I never new there was such a desire in the antebellum South for autonomous black societies (!) - (churches, schools, and other) but am not surprised at the white hysteria any apparent black organization caused! The above pic is random and is NOT the book cover. Haven’t really read the book, it just happened to catch my eye a few months ago and so I jotted it down in my notebook of books.

This book raised my level of interest in slaves and free African Americans in slavery and post slavery American society.

Before I saw this book, I had already read through this masterpiece:



Still I Rise: A cartoon history of African Americans by Roland Owen Laird, Jr. with Taneshia Nash Laird

"Permeating this encyclopedic research is Posro's recognition of the beauty, resilience, and spiritual endurance of black Americans." --Charles Johnson

Every American and anyone else who would like to read a thourough record of AA history needs to read this book.

At the same time (during the cold months of Dec and January) I was also reading Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader and Centuries of Greatness: The West African Kingdoms by Philip Koslow.

Let’s start with Centuries of Greatness.



This was an excellent read especially for beginners in West African history. It briefly covers pre-historic times and the environmental challenges that shaped the region’s humanity and continues on through the 19th Century. It covers a good variety of African settlements.

The only one discrepancy I had with the book, is how this one paragraph was worded:

quote:

---

”Despite the example of Nok, West Africa’s location caused it to lag behind the eastern and northern regions of the continent. While West Africans were still living in farming settlements, the Egyptians, in contact with the great river-valley civilizations of the Near East, such as Babylon and Assyria, enjoyed a culture of high sophistication under their rulers, the pharaohs. The communities of North Africa, propelled into close contact with the Romans and Phoenicians by their position on the Mediterranean Sea, were large and prosperous by the 4th Century B.C.
“West Africa was separated from these civilizations by the Sahara, a 3-million-square-mile expanse of land that, by around 2,000 B.C., had dried to desert. This geographic barrier did not prevent the development of West Africa during the Iron Age.” (20)

---

I thought it was informative but was also a bit out-dated.

Though, this book appears to have been irritant to some Westerners (Eurocentrists?) who have read it! (<- referring especially to the more critical of these user reviews – which there were very few of)

From the inside covers of the one at my library:

quote:

---

“From the primeval cataclysms that formed the continent to the civil wars and genocide that ravage it today – a work of startling grandeur and scope that provides a remarkable panoramic history of Africa, by a deeply intelligent writer who has spent most of his adult life there.

We all originated in Africa, and no matter what our race, our most ancient relationship is with that continent. Reader tells us the story of our earliest ancestors’ adaptation to Africa’s ferocious obstacles of jungle, river, and desert, and of how its unique array of animals, plants, viruses, and parasites has over millions of years helped and hindered human progress to a degree unknown any where else on Earth.

Illustrated with many of the authors own beautiful photographs, which capture the staggering diversity of human experience in every part of the continent – from the inland estuaries of the Niger and the rain forests of the Equator, to the deserts of the North and the high veld of the South – this book weaves together into a richly fluent narrative the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, the changing patterns of indigenous life over the millennia, the complex history of slaver, the devastating impact of European settlers, and the fragile emergence of independent nations. John Reader has given us an extraordinary biography of an infinitely fascinating continent.”

---

^ A nice Journey through the Ancient Empires.

These are what I’ve been reading within the last year. In addition, I’ve scanned a number of books on Ancient Egypt, including one on the Great Pyramid’s construction, (I may post in that thread later), but mostly centered on other aspects of Kemet’s culture, history, and society in general.

One book I read (got through most of it) because of its mention on ES: The Mismeasure of Man by Steven Jay Gould <- Look at them wiki-monkeys squirm! [citations needed - lol] All I can say is that it is an extremely useful book for anyone slightly interested in the rather precarious methodology of racial science in the past.



^^

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posted

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Originally posted by Alive [What Box]:

I’ve scanned a number of books on Ancient Egypt, including one on the Great Pyramid’s construction, (I may post in that thread later)

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