Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A Short History of Africa

Author: Roland Oliver, J. D. Fage

Narrator: Ralph Cosham

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-07-09

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 68 votes

Genres: History, World

Publisher's Summary:

This classic work draws on the whole range of literature about Africa as well as evidence provided by archaeology, oral traditions, language relationships, and social institutions. It marshals the most authoritative views of African specialists into an absorbing narrative and puts forward original conclusions that take the study of Africa a stage further.

Critic Reviews:

"Geoffrey Howard delivers a flawless narration, twisting his tongue around not only the native African words and places, but also the multitude of European languages. Howard's reading is slow enough for the listener to contemplate the issues and events, yet fluid enough to entice the listener to learn what happens next." (AudioFile)

"Well researched, well written, well presented...Howard's crisp English accent adds an air of importance to the text." (KLIATT)

Members Reviews:

Concise, Comprehensive, Well-Written

After finishing "the African Experience" series of lectures by the Great Courses (produced by the Teaching Company), I was left wanting a little more chronological history that tied things together a little better. This book was the perfect supplemental to that series, as it provided an excellent, traditional history of the continent.

Things I liked:

Comprehensive scope. From prehistory all the way through recent events, with a good distribution between periods.

The whole continent. For such a short work spanning such a long time scale, I was impressed that they didn't cut corners. Northern Africa is included as part of Africa, showing the full range of historical patterns and trajectories. Many "short" histories, and even many not-so-short ones, cut out Northern Africa as some kind of anomaly. This book manages to nicely incorporate Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Chad, Sudan, and others into the whole of African history. It's very interesting to see the flows of trade, people, ideas, and even the conflicts that have traversed the Sahara going back to ancient times as an integral part of the unique dynamics of the continent.

Focus on the big picture. This book does a really nice job taking so much time and space, so many peoples and places, so many cultures and religions, and synthesizing them into a workable narrative. You get a great sense of the larger story of African histories.

Multiplicity. In doing the above, the book doesn't shy away from the uniqueness of each region, sub region, nation, and all the cultures of the continent. The authors strike a good balance between the forest and the trees--managing to touch all the big bases with enough detail to provide substance without getting caught up in the minutia.

I'm especially pleased with the rather nice treatment of the ancient history in all the various regions, and likewise with medieval and colonial history, while still managing to give an impressive, sweeping account of everything you'd expect to hear about in the modern history (and some, like the West Saharan conflict) that I was surprised got more than a casual mention. The whole thing follows a well written narrative that bounces between all these geographical areas without the reader noticing or feeling disoriented.

If there's one criticism to make, I suppose it would be that to do all this in such a short volume leaves little room for historical controversy.