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Kiraitu Murungi An Odyssey in Kenyan ...
In this painstakingly researched and insightful book, Professor Peter Kagwanja and co-author, Humphrey Ringera, offer a lucid panoramic view of contemporary Kenyan politics peered through the lenses of one of the iconic figures of the country's post-Mau Mau power elite — Kiraitu Murungi.
The authors of this buy-one-get-three narrative depart radically from the orthodox biographical writing, weaving the life story of Murungi together with the chronicles of the Mau Mau roots of freedom and the epic rise of a post-colonial power elite as the most significant development in the last half-century of Kenya's independence.
Arguably the best political portrait of a Kenyan politician since David Goldsworthy's Tom Mboya: The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget, the book succeeds in capturing the palpably tense political atmosphere, hustle and bustle and the risk-prone elbowing for power in the run-up to the 2013 elections.
The authors bring out the good, the bad and the ugly of the new Kenyan power elite in politics, academy, military and business as the generation with the historic mission to deliver the country to stable democracy and prosperity or push it down the cliff of anarchy, state failure and decay.
Kiraitu Murungi is a central actor in this unfolding national drama.
The Ultimate Collection A Vegetarian ...
Discover the vast array of dishes, from traditional Indian to Thai, Arabian and Zanzibar as well as low calorie and toddlers' recipes.
The Ultimate Collection will show you how, with skillful blending of flavors or with the inclusion of herbs and apices, you can transform simple dishes into something special and delicious.
The recipes are simple, yet elegant for all occasions which you will enjoy to prepare for family and friends. With over 550 recipes from basic to contemporary dishes.
The Big Conservation Lie: The Untold ...
The Big Conservation Lie' is a wakeup call focused on a field that has been 'front and center' of many people's hearts and minds in recent years; the conservation of Africa's wildlife. It is a pursuit whose power to inspire is only rivalled by its ability to blind its audience to reality.
This book takes the reader through Kenya's conservation 'industry' and the players therein with all their prejudices, weaknesses and commitment to causes, many of which are indistinguishable from their personalities.
It is a call to indigenous Africans to claim their place at the table where the management of their natural resources is being discussed and invites well-meaning donors to look beyond the romantic images and detect the possible role of their money in the disenfranchisement of a people.
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
Set in the shadow of Kenya's independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines the special circumstances that brought black, brown and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation.
The novel traces the lives and loves of three men--preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian technician Babu Salim--whose lives intersect when they are implicated in the controversial birth of a child. Years later, when Babu's grandson Rajan--who ekes out a living by singing Babu's epic tales of the railway's construction--accidentally kisses a mysterious stranger in a dark nightclub, the encounter provides the spark to illuminate the three men's shared, murky past.
With its riveting multiracial, multicultural cast and diverse literary allusions, Dance of the Jakaranda could well be a story of globalization. Yet the novel is firmly anchored in the African oral storytelling tradition, its language a dreamy, exalted, and earthy mix that creates new thresholds of identity, providing a fresh metaphor for race in contemporary Africa.
Dedan Kimathi The Real Story
Brief Summary
"To most people, Dedan Kimathi, the man who led the Mau Mau movement in Kenya’s forests in the 1950s to win freedom from the British Empire, has remained a shadowy and enigmatic figure.
Attempts to portray his heroic and fascinating life have produced varying results, ranging from historical distortion to artistic idealism.
ISBN:9789966498151
Author:Samuel Kahiga
Shades of Benga The Story of Popular ...
Brief Summary
Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya delves into the foundations of modern Kenyan music, examining external influences from the English waltz to Afro Cuban Rumba and how they helped mould new music styles across Africa. Rumba was brought to Eastern Africa via the itinerant Congolese musicians Edouard Masengo and Jean Bosco Mwenda who’s intricate guitar-picking styles largely shaped the present Kenyan sound, with the Benga playing a dominant role.
Although dozens of works have been published over the years on various characteristics of popular music in Kenya – from conventional folk to hip hop – none captures the history of music and its players as authoritatively as Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya. An informed study of some literary publications and academic papers on music immediately reveals that the writers, who frequently tend to be foreign ‘experts’, do not seek the opinions of pioneer musicians who helped shape the various genres of music.
Their research is largely based on information obtained from sources that are readily available on the Internet but often not easily verifiable. As we wrote this book, we made every possible effort to engage with practitioners directly involved in creating and shaping benga in order to ensure that their collective voice remains the sole critical factor to placing the music in its proper perspective while simultaneously giving the other genres in Kenya their correct definition. We undertook the arduous task of meticulously putting together the content that would faithfully recount the remarkable story of the development of our music in a manner previously not attempted.
In an effort to make this 678-page book an easy read as well as eye catching, Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music in Kenya features over 400 pictures.
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ISBN:6164001943132
Author:Ketebul Music
Nairobi then and now 50 years by Step...
Brief Summary
This book is a window into Nairobi's past and a reminder of its present. The transformation we see is uneven - some things and places have evolved unrecognizably, while others remain constant. Nairobi is a place of great change. Rapid development and outward expansion is ever reshaping the landscape. Kenya and the UK have been partners in Nairobi's evolutionary journey throughout.
Not just government, but also in terms of trade and investment, technology, security, knowledge, and people. The Kenya-UK partnership will continue the journey down this road to the future, towards achieving the Kenyan Government's Vision 2030 and beyond.
50 years in the future many places shown in this book could be long gone. While a few special old places might remain, our vision for the 2063 edition of this book is an ultra-modern Nairobi, a major interchange of the globalized and interconnected world. And a place where we continue to learn from the lessons of the past, as we focus on the promise of the future.
Den of Inequities by Kinyanjui Kombani
Omosh is a construction worker at a local slum whose life is rudely changed when he is arrested by overzealous policemen.
Gosti, the local mugger, comes home to find his long lost father, who seems to have great plans for him, or what does he want? On the other side of town, Aileen’s seems to have everything: she is the reigning Miss Campus, daughter of a renowned politician and a ‘cool life’.
A misadventure in a matatu changes her life, forever. What do these three characters have in common? And who is killing police officers so brazenly? And is the counter attack justified?
Fighting the Mau Mau The British Army...
Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency
British Army counterinsurgency campaigns were supposedly waged within the bounds of international law, overcoming insurgents with the minimum force necessary. This revealing study questions what this meant for the civilian population during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, one of Britain's most violent decolonization wars.
For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship between notions of minimum force and the colonial tradition of exemplary force where harsh repression was frequently employed as a valid means of quickly crushing rebellion.
Although a range of restrained policies such as Special Forces methods, restrictive rules of engagement and surrender schemes prevented the campaign from degenerating into genocide, the army simultaneously coerced the population to drop their support for the rebels, imposing collective fines, mass detentions and frequent interrogations, often tolerating rape, indiscriminate killing and torture to terrorize the population into submission.
Kidneys for the King by Miguna Miguna
Kidneys for the King has a carefully developed structure. The first and the last chapter focus on the (de)construction of two public figures – Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
These two embodiments of the promise of radical transformation and their abysmal failures frame Miguna’s exposition of the trouble with Kenya in chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Against the background of the reception of Peeling Back the Mask in the local and international press; on television and on the Internet, Miguna details the rot of our society. A polluted police force; rampant corruption; the vagaries of an irresponsible media; a vile political culture; wayward leaders, a gullible electorate and the truant, half-hearted attempts at implementing a progressive Constitution.
Unbounded by Boniface Mwangi
Brief Summary
In just over a decade, Boniface Mwangi has risen from poverty to prominence in Kenya. He is renowned for his powerful photographs and his courageous protests calling for social justice. However, little is known about the man himself.
Unbounded is a collection of engaging personal stories that takes us through some of the people, places and events that have shaped Boniface, easily one of Kenya best known photographers and activists. It is a portrait of the child, the man and some of the human, harrowing and even humorous episodes that he has witnessed and photographed.
This book tells of the two remarkable women - his mother and grandmother - who influenced his character and inspired his drive to raise awareness about poverty, inequality and corruption. His work as a photo-activist is grounded in social engagement, collective action and the need for justice.
This is the story of a man of determination and warmth, a man who lives his life to make a difference. We cannot change the world as individuals. We can only change the world together.
Dedan Kimathi The Whole Story by Jose...
Brief Summary
Writer takes an honest look at the life and times of Dedan Kimathi, Kenya’s foremost freedom fighter at his Kimathi Street corner statue in Nairobi, a dreadlocked Dedan Kimathi is a small, frail, bent old man struggling to lift his rifle.
That is the public image of the greatest Kenyan ever to live. Old, frail, starved. The sculptors were not helped by a literature that portrays Mau Mau adherents as bloodthirsty, atavistic, rural, poor and illiterate.
Which child wants this for his grandpa? Yet image is everything.
ISBN:9789966229724
Author:Joseph Karimi
Son of Fate by John Kiriamiti
This novel is by the author of the celebrated My Life in Crime and is his first. The life of the 'Son of Fate' is a grim struggle for survival, after his release from prison.
He tries his luck at farming, and odd jobs in the city, but everything fails, and he finds himself on the wrong side of the law again. But a glimmer of hope comes when he rescues a tycoon.
Walking in Kenyatta Struggles By Dunc...
The legacy of notable leadership in Africa, be it in politics, government, academia, business or the corporate sector cannot be said to be adequately chronicled and published. Yet, the moment the story of a man or woman of great achievement, and whose contribution has changed the destiny of others is published — particularly when the one in focus has been presented as a person of flesh and blood — the inspiration that could result can eventually transform people, generations or even entire nations.
In acknowledgement of the foregoing, Kenya Leadership Institute (KLI) has initiated a Biography Programme with a mission to publish memoirs of outstanding men and women whose contributions to the makings of modern day Kenya beg systematic documentation. KLI hopes that publications that will result from this initiative will inspire Kenyans to aim higher in their various pursuits and rethink their individual roles in nation building.
The programme also aims at prompting useful discourse on issues of national interest.
Indians in Kenya The Politics of Dias...
Brief Summary
Working as merchants, skilled tradesmen, clerks, lawyers, and journalists, Indians formed the economic and administrative middle class in colonial Kenya. In general, they were wealthier than Africans, but were denied the political and economic privileges that Europeans enjoyed. Moreover, despite their relative prosperity, Indians were precariously positioned in Kenya. Africans usually viewed them as outsiders, and Europeans largely considered them subservient. Indians demanded recognition on their own terms.
Indians in Kenya chronicles the competing, often contradictory, strategies by which the South Asian diaspora sought a political voice in Kenya from the beginning of colonial rule in the late 1890s to independence in the 1960s.
Indians’ intellectual, economic, and political connections with South Asia shaped their understanding of their lives in Kenya. Sana Aiyar investigates how the many strands of Indians’ diasporic identity influenced Kenya’s political leadership, from claiming partnership with Europeans in their mission to colonize and "civilize” East Africa to successful collaborations with Africans to battle for racial equality, including during the Mau Mau Rebellion.
She also explores how the hierarchical structures of colonial governance, the material inequalities between Indians and Africans, and the radicalized political discourses that flourished in both colonial and postcolonial Kenya limited the success of alliances across racial and class lines. Aiyar demonstrates that only by examining the ties that bound Indians to worlds on both sides of the Indian Ocean can we understand how Kenya came to terms with its South Asian minority.
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ISBN:9780674289888
Author:Sana Aiyar
The New Harvest Agricultural Innovati...
Brief Summary
African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa faces three major opportunities that can transform its agriculture into a force for economic growth: advances in science and technology; the creation of regional markets; and the emergence of a new crop of entrepreneurial leaders dedicated to the continent's economic improvement.
Filled with case studies from within Africa and success stories from developing nations around the world, The New Harvest outlines the policies and institutional changes necessary to promote agricultural innovation across the African continent.
Incorporating research from academia, government, civil society, and private industry, the book suggests multiple ways that individual African countries can work together at the regional level to develop local knowledge and resources, harness technological innovation, encourage entrepreneurship, increase agricultural output, create markets, and improve infrastructure.
War Crimes by Rasna Warah
War Crimes: How Warlords, Politicians, Foreign Governments and Aid Agencies Conspired to Create a Failed State in Somalia.
In War Crimes Kenyan journalist Rasna Warah exposes how foreign governments and humanitarian agencies conspired to keep Somalia in a permanent state of under-development and conflict and how Somali politicians, warlords, clan-based fiefdoms and terrorists benefited from the ensuing chaos and anarchy.
The book is about the many war crimes that have taken place in Somalia in the name of peace, development, religion and reconciliation. It reveals who gained from the spoils of war and who paid the price. War Crimes is an insightful examination of why a failed state colluded in its own destruction and why the international community did little to stop it.
A History of the Luo Speaking Peoples...
A history of the Luo speaking peoples of Eastern Africa.
In Africa, the past goes to the very origins of humanity. It continues until just before the scramble for Africa in the late 19th century.
Africa and Africans deserve to be known on their own terms, and to achieve this goal, we need to improve our understanding of what took place before colonialism rewrote many of life's rules.
We can do this best by studying how Africa was peopled; how different African population varieties developed; how the over 1400 languages spoken in Africa evolved; why occupation has been an important aspect of African perceptions of identity; why certain places were attractive, and how trade routes altered comparative value of places; and how in turn, trade fostered the development of more complex societies.
