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Walking the Nile by Levison Wood
His journey is 4,250 miles long.
He is walking every step of the way, camping in the wild, foraging for food, fending for himself against multiple dangers. He is passing through rainforest, savannah, swamp, desert and lush delta oasis.
He will cross seven, very different countries. No one has ever made this journey on foot.
In this detailed, thoughtful, inspiring and dramatic book, recounting Levison Wood's walk the length of the Nile, he will uncover the history of the Nile, yet through the people he meets and who will help him with his journey, he will come face to face with the great story of a modern Africa emerging out of the past.
Exploration and Africa are two of his great passions - they drive him on and motivate his inquisitiveness and resolution not to fail, yet the challenges of the terrain, the climate, the animals, the people and his own psychological resolution will throw at him are immense.
The dangers are very real, but so is the motivation for this ex-army officer. If he can overcome the mental and physical challenges, he will be walking into history.
Fan into Flame by John Gatu
"I returned to the hangar quite drunk and forgot to fasten my rifle to my waist. When I woke up in the morning, I realized that my rifle, loaded with six bullets, had been stolen. In the military, and especially during a state of war, losing one's rifle was considered a serious crime. It is tantamount to willingly handing over a weapon to the enemy to fight you ...'."- Rev. Dr John G. Gatti
From an early age, John Gan) yearns for and cherishes his independence. At the end of his primary school education, instead of joining a teacher training college, young Gaul opts to travel to Nairobi, believing a better world awaited him there.
Much later, after scratching hard, he discovers this `better' world when he joins the army. Serving in Ethiopia and Somaliland, and finally traveling to London for the Victory Parade, thrills young Gatti despite the dangers involved. It is at the peak of his career in the military and after receiving the most coveted awards that John Gatti makes another decision: to retire from the army and work closer home. Gatti, the civilian, engages in different jobs before working as a clerk at Kambili Mission Church.
"It had nothing to do with my Christian faith ... it was purely for the salary and my desire to work and live near my family," he confesses. It was during his service at Kambui that he encountered the 'flame' that continues to burn in him as he allows himself to be used to transform others.
Fan into Flame is a multilayered narrative with the nuances of a thriller as the author unveils dramatic events that took place when he was a soldier in Ethiopia and the serenity that he encounters after his 'rebirth'. The story spans through the history of colonial and independent Kenya. Rev. John Gata's passion for his work as a servant of God, brings out the best in everyone he interacts with, no matter what their station in life.
His role as an agent of peace and positive change in the church, his country and beyond, cannot be overemphasized.
Titan The Life of John D Rockefeller Sr
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.--history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty--is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians.
Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews).
Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist.
Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.
While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him.
Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light.
John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation.
With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Ale...
Brief summary
Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister.
Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind.
An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary.
A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcom X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.
My Story Steven Gerrard
Steven Gerrard is the former captain of Liverpool football team and of the England national football team, and is the only player ever to have scored in a FA cup final, a league cup final, a UEFA cup final and a champion's league final.
His entire career, since 1998, has been spent at Anfield with Liverpool.
In this book he charts his full playing career, shedding light on the defining games, his life off the pitch as well as the players and managers he's encountered.
E mc2 by David Bodanis
'By the end of the astonishing E=mc2, a dedicated reader will have achieved, if only by osmosis, an understanding of Einstein's theory of relativity and feel quite at ease dining with Nobel Prize winners.
It's a lucid, even thrilling study: the very best kind of science journalism. I didn't know I could know so much.' Fay Weldon, Books of the Year, Washington Post
In 1905, Albert Einstein produced five historic papers that shattered many cherished scientific beliefs.
One of those papers introduced the theory of special relativity and his legendary equation, E=mc2. Generations have grown up knowing that equation changed the shape of our world, but without understanding what it really means and why it is so significant.
In this fascinating biography David Bodanis tells the story of one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history. He looks at the elements 'e', 'm' and 'c'; and honours the scientists whose landmark discoveries paved the way for Einstein.
He plots the course of the equation through the twentieth century, showing how our lives have been revolutionized by its applications; and looks far ahead to the future.
But as with any biography, it is the human stories that really ignite the subject - stories of love, courage and tragedy, of near misses, disappointments and disasters that, brought together by Bodanis in this remarkable book, turn Einstein's seemingly impenetrable theory into a dramatic and accessible human achievement.
Against All Odds by Kalonzo Musyoka
AGAINST ALL ODDS: THE STORY OF STEPHEN KALONZO MUSYOKA, is tale of hope, courage, resilience, determination and faith. It is a story of a village boy who rose from the ashes of poverty in the dry, thirsty and forsaken part of rural Kenya into political stardom.
Musyoka, the son of a peasant farmer-cum-shopkeeper, grew up in Mwingi district in Kenya’s Eastern province. His place of birth was and still remains one of the remotest regions in Kenya.
The book tells the story of the journey of his life, so far. It finds its beginnings in the local village in Mwingi, where he was born. It traverses time and space to see him through the village school, high school and university, even as it gives a rendition of the various vicissitudes that informed his formative years.
From there, it travels on to his early experiments with building a career in legal practice, before plunging into the mud of politics, the world of diplomacy and the challenges of statehood and statesmanship.
Being his mother’s only son, Musyoka grew up under the gunfire, and terror of the Shifta bandits. His mother lived in constant fear of witchcraft. The evil eye, she thought, would take her son away.
The biography tells of Musyoka’s struggles to gain meaningful education, overcome poverty and eventual entry into Kenyan politics. It narrates his rise to stardom, trials and tribulations and his strong Christian faith.
It documents his crucial role as a peacemaker since his schooldays. The impact he had on the Sudanese and Somali peace negotiations. His fears, anxieties and survival instincts.
It is a tale of respect for elders. A tale of a man determined to walk the straight path of truthfulness, honesty and integrity. It is a tale of a loving husband and father.
It tells of his loyalty, his desire for a Kenya that is not just God fearing but free from want, poverty, corruption and hunger. His eyes are set on a country whose economy will one day compete with those of the developed world; a country whose people will walk and live free from fear of insecurity; a nation whose people will enjoy a free, high quality education, social security and good health.
The biography details his political ambitions to ascend to Kenya’s presidency; his dreams, his hopes and his aspirations for Kenya.
Caleb Atemi is a renowned writer, communications and public relations consultant. Atemi, a former News Editor with the Nation Media Group and journalism lecturer, is working on other biographies detailing the life and times of prominent Kenyan personalities.
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ISBN:2147483647
Author:Kalonzo Musyoka and Caleb Atemi
Desert Flower by Waris Dirie
Waris Dirie (the name means desert flower) lives a double life - by day she is a famous model and UN spokeswoman on women's rights in Africa, at night she dreams of her native Somalia.
Waris, one of 12 children, was born into a traditional family of desert nomads in East Africa. She remembers her early childhood as carefree- racing camels and moving on with her family to the next grazing spot - until it came her turn to meet the old woman who administered the ancient custom imposed on most Somalian girls: circumcision.
Waris suffered this torture when she was just five years old. Then, aged 12, when her father attempted to arrange a marriage with a 60 year old stranger in exchange for five camels - she took flight. After an extraordinary escape through the dangerous desert she made her way to London and worked as a maid for the Somalian ambassador until that family returned home.
Penniless and speaking little English, she became a janitor in McDonalds where she was famously discovered by a fashion photographer.
Her story is a truly inspirational and extraordinary self-portrait of a remarkable woman whose spirit is as breathtaking as her beauty.
Emmas War by Deborah Scroggins
Tall, striking, and adventurous to a fault, young British relief worker Emma McCune came to Sudan determined to make a difference in a country decimated by the longest-running civil war in Africa.
She became a near legend in the bullet-scarred, famine-ridden country, but her eventual marriage to a rebel warlord made international headlines—and spelled disastrous consequences for her ideals.
Enriched by Deborah Scroggins’s firsthand experience as an award-winning journalist in Sudan, this unforgettable account of Emma McCune’s tragically short life also provides an up-close look at the volatile politics in the region.
It’s a world where international aid fuels armies as well as the starving population, and where the northern-based Islamic government—with ties to Osama bin Laden—is locked in a war with the Christian and pagan south over religion, oil and slaves.
Tying together these vastly disparate forces as well as Emma’s own role in the problems of the region, Emma’s War is at once a disturbing love story and a fascinating exploration of the moral quandaries behind humanitarian aid.
Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs, Elon Musk—a real-life Tony Stark—and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new "makers” Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion.
Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius’s life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits.Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition?
He argues that Musk—one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history—is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy.
Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.
We the People by Rev Timothy Njoya
Timothy Murere Njoya makes a decision to convert to Christianity. He is met with threats of a beating. The year is 1956. The Mau Mau had taken to the forest determined to win back the land stolen from them by British settlers.
Now, Njoya has an all-consuming purpose. Based on his newfound sovereignty, he dedicates his life to restoring the people’s humanity and the country’s nationhood.
His pursuit sees him thrice defrocked and, thrice left for dead, but he is thrice reinstated and thrice rises again, surviving against the odds to see the beginning of the realization of his dream—a Constitution based on the sovereignty of We the People.
Peeling Back the Mask by Miguna Miguna
Peeling Back the Mask is an insider's account from one of the Kenyan Prime Minister's former adviser detailing instances of corruption and fraud at the highest level of Kenyan government.
With massive online and media coverage, this book has become the spearhead of a national campaign to aspire to a new corruption-free Kenya.
This remarkable book generated twenty thousand hits on the publisher website within hours of its announcement and Google reports Miguna Miguna is in the top five subjects searched online in Africa.
Malcolm X by Manning Marable
Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world.
Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties.
Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
In the House of the Interpreter by Ng...
Renowned novelist, poet, playwright, and literary critic Ngugi wa Thiong’o was a student at a prestigious, British-run boarding school near Nairobi when the tumultuous Mau Mau Uprising for independence and Kenyan sovereignty gripped his country.
While he enjoyed scouting trips and chess tournaments, his family home was razed to the ground and his brother, a member of the insurgency, was captured by the British and taken to a concentration camp. But Ngugi could not escape history, and eventually found himself jailed after a run in with the forces of colonialism.
Ngugi richly and poignantly evokes the experiences that would transform him into a world-class writer and, as a political dissident, a moral compass to us all. A winning celebration of the implacable determination of youth and the power of hope, here is a searing account of the history of a man—and the story of a nation.
I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
A Memoir by the Youngest Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
"I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday."
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.
Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.
I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.
I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.
Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s inside account of the crises, choices, and challenges she faced during her four years as America’s 67th Secretary of State, and how those experiences drive her view of the future."All of us face hard choices in our lives,” Hillary Rodham Clinton writes at the start of this personal chronicle of years at the center of world events. "Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become.” In the aftermath of her 2008 presidential run, she expected to return to representing New York in the United States Senate.
To her surprise, her former rival for the Democratic Party nomination, newly elected President Barack Obama, asked her to serve in his administration as Secretary of State. This memoir is the story of the four extraordinary and historic years that followed, and the hard choices that she and her colleagues confronted.Secretary Clinton and President Obama had to decide how to repair fractured alliances, wind down two wars, and address a global financial crisis.
They faced a rising competitor in China, growing threats from Iran and North Korea, and revolutions across the Middle East. Along the way, they grappled with some of the toughest dilemmas of US foreign policy, especially the decision to send Americans into harm’s way, from Afghanistan to Libya to the hunt for Osama bin Laden.By the end of her tenure, Secretary Clinton had visited 112 countries, traveled nearly one million miles, and gained a truly global perspective on many of the major trends reshaping the landscape of the twenty-first century, from economic inequality to climate change to revolutions in energy, communications, and health.
Drawing on conversations with numerous leaders and experts, Secretary Clinton offers her views on what it will take for the United States to compete and thrive in an interdependent world. She makes a passionate case for human rights and the full participation in society of women, youth, and LGBT people. An astute eyewitness to decades of social change, she distinguishes the trendlines from the headlines and describes the progress occurring throughout the world, day after day.
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Nine years before the Senate campaign that made him one of the most influential and compelling voices in American politics, Barack Obama published this lyrical, unsentimental, and powerfully affecting memoir, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller when it was reissued in 2004.
Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama’s struggle to understand the forces that shaped him as the son of a black African father and white American mother—a struggle that takes him from the American heartland to the ancestral home of his great-aunt in the tiny African village of Alego.
Obama opens his story in New York, where he hears that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has died in a car accident.
The news triggers a chain of memories as Barack retraces his family’s unusual history: the migration of his mother’s family from small-town Kansas to the Hawaiian islands; the love that develops between his mother and a promising young Kenyan student, a love nurtured by youthful innocence and the integrationist spirit of the early sixties; his father’s departure from Hawaii when Barack was two, as the realities of race and power reassert themselves; and Barack’s own awakening to the fears and doubts that exist not just between the larger black and white worlds but within himself.
Propelled by a desire to understand both the forces that shaped him and his father’s legacy, Barack moves to Chicago to work as a community organizer.
There, against the backdrop of tumultuous political and racial conflict, he works to turn back the mounting despair of the inner city. His story becomes one with those of the people he works with as he learns about the value of community, the necessity of healing old wounds, and the possibility of faith in the midst of adversity.
Barack’s journey comes full circle in Kenya, where he finally meets the African side of his family and confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life. Traveling through a country racked by brutal poverty and tribal conflict, but whose people are sustained by a spirit of endurance and hope, Barack discovers that he is inescapably bound to brothers and sisters living an ocean away—and that by embracing their common struggles he can finally reconcile his divided inheritance. A searching meditation on the meaning of identity in America, Dreams from My Father might be the most revealing portrait we have of a major American leader—a man who is playing, and will play, an increasingly prominent role in healing a fractious and fragmented nation."
I Dreamed of Africa by Kuki Gallmann
At the age of twenty-five, Kuki Gallman, divorced and badly injured in a devastating car accident, left Italy to convalesce in Africa with the man who would become her second husband.
Enchanted by the land, they established a vast ranch on the Laikipia plateau in Kenya. But Africa's splendor came with a price. Filled with pain and joy, beauty and drama, Gallman's haunting memoir "captures perfectly the magic of Kenya"
Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
Born in a rural Kenyan village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most African girls then were uneducated. In her remarkable and inspiring autobiography, she tells of her studies with Catholic missionaries, earning bachelors and master's degrees in the United States, and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD and to head a university department in Kenya.
She tells of her numerous run-ins with the brutal government of Daniel arap Moi and of the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa, and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages.
Maathai's extraordinary courage and determination helped transform Kenya's government into the democracy in which she now serves as Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources and as a Member of Parliament. Eventually her achievement was internationally recognized in the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her 'contribution to sustainable development, human rights, and peace'.
In Unbowed, we are in the presence of a hugely charismatic yet humble woman whose remarkable story carries with it an inspiring message of hope. Hers is an extraordinary story, spanning different worlds and changing times, and revealing what the courage, determination, tenacity and humour of one good woman can achieve; how as small a thing as planting a seedling and watering it can made all the difference in the world.
Through My African Eyes by Jeff Koinange
"Through My African Eyes!” is a concise narrative covering some of the major players in 20th century African politics. The book is rich with insights into the personal and intellectual underpinnings of many historical events in Africa. Chronicles of some pretty interesting Africans from warlords, soldiers, victims and politicians lend insight into Jeff’s celebrated journalistic style. Through his eyes we are made to understand the role of journalist’s as binders of our social fabric.
"Through My African Eyes” is very informative and quite humorous, utilizing a modern quick precise narrative style. He is able to describe complex global geopolitical issues with incisive analysis. The book surf’s one through the experience with speed and historical accuracy. We see the visual the words impart, rather than being stuck in prose. The best part is being able to walk the journey informed by a largely Kenyan perspective. Jeff outlines clearly how biased reportage can splinter any society and promote its disintegration by pandering to people’s lowest instincts.
The narrative draws out lesser-known aspects of his life. Jeff’s unblinking examination of his grandfather’s life is historically illuminating and serves as a symbolic bridge between the beginning and the end of colonialism. Jeff is the first African ever to win a Television Emmy and a George Foster Peabody. He merited the Vernon Jarrett Award as well as the prestigious! ‘Prix Bayeux’ for reportage that arrested global crises."