Antigua and Barbuda is a Caribbean twin island country located in the northeastern region of the Lesser Antilles. It is composed of two major islands, Antigua and Barbuda, along with smaller islands such as Great Bird, Green, Guinea, Long, Maiden, Prickly Pear, York Islands, and more. Antigua and Barbuda has a population of approximately 100,000 people with the majority living on the island of Antigua. The official language is English and the currency is the Eastern Caribbean dollar. Tourism is the main economic driver for the country, with its beautiful beaches, cultural attractions, and abundant marine life drawing thousands of visitors each year. The capital city of Antigua and Barbuda is St. John's, which is located on the island of Antigua. Other notable towns on the islands include All Saints, Old Road, Bolands, and Parham. The country has a rich history, having been inhabited by indigenous peoples before being colonized by Europeans. It gained independence from Britain in 1981 and is now a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Fair winds and fine cruising is author Chris Doyle's wish for readers of this popular, newly updated guide to the 10 island nations of this enchanting Caribbean chain.Doyle's background in research makes this volume rich in practical details; yet its tone is conversational. His is also an intimate knowledge, gathered from more than 20 years of live-aboard Caribbean cruising on his Carib 41 Helos, a former charterboat.The Leewards are a cultural and topographic mix, and Doyle addresses them by geographical grouping. The Renaissance Islands (St. Martin, St. Barts and Anguilla), an economically strong bareboating enclave, offer short cruising passages and a wide choice of anchorages. The Islands That Brush the Clouds - a volcanic chain strung between Saba and Montserrat - present cruisers with a variety of channels and terrain. Most broadly strewn are the Islands of Mountains and Mangroves, a patchwork chiefly of rugged rainforest and exotic fauna, guarded in spots by spectacular reefs.The southern Leewards in particular have cried for reliable charting. Doyle provides aid throughout, using GPS coordinates, a trove of charts and color maps. All are cross-referenced with the newly released Caribbean Yachting Charts, exactingly detailed and available through Cruising Guide Publications. Spectacular photographs add a visual feast.Onshore accommodations, transportation, communications, entertainment and provisioning are also addressed throughout the guide, and in an exhaustive directory by island and service type.

In 1834 Antigua became the only British colony in the Caribbean to move directly from slavery to full emancipation. Immediate freedom, however, did not live up to its promise, as it did not guarantee any level of stability or autonomy, and the implementation of new forms of coercion and control made it, in many ways, indistinguishable from slavery. In Troubling Freedom Natasha Lightfoot tells the story of how Antigua's newly freed black working people struggled to realize freedom in their everyday lives, prior to and in the decades following emancipation. She presents freedpeople's efforts to form an efficient workforce, acquire property, secure housing, worship, and build independent communities in response to elite prescriptions for acceptable behavior and oppression. Despite its continued efforts, Antigua's black population failed to convince whites that its members were worthy of full economic and political inclusion. By highlighting the diverse ways freedpeople defined and created freedom through quotidian acts of survival and occasional uprisings, Lightfoot complicates conceptions of freedom and the general narrative that landlessness was the primary constraint for newly emancipated slaves in the Caribbean.

The purpose of this Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) performance assessment is to provide an objective analysis of the present performance of the public financial management system in Antigua and Barbuda, and identify changes incurred since the last PEFA assessment undertaken in 2010. In the wake of a prolonged economic crisis, fiscal outcomes have not been consistent with the budget as approved. Central government public finances are comprehensively presented in budget documents, but some weaknesses persist. New policy initiatives and their budgetary implications are not sufficiently analyzed; a significant share of extra-budgetary expenditures remains unreported; and oversight and reporting requirements of statutory bodies are not yet fully enforced, impeding a comprehensive assessment of the associated fiscal risks. Although the revenue administration has been strengthened over the last years, the control over budget execution is still weak. There have been improvements in the quality of external audit, but lack of Parliamentary scrutiny undermines the accountability framework.

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John "If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ." So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up. Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.