To justify the plundering of today's Democratic Republic of the Congo, U.S. intellectual elites have continuously produced dismissive Congo discourses. Tracing these discourses in great depth and breadth, Johnny Van Hove shows how U.S. intellectuals (and their influential European counterparts) have used the Congo in similar fashions for their own goals. Analyzing intellectuals as diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, Joseph Conrad, and David Van Reybrouck, the book offers a theorization of Central West Africa, a case study of normalized narratives on the "Other," and a stirring wake-up call for contemporary writers on international history and politics.

With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce the population by half. . While he did all this, he carefully constructed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian. Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize in 1999, King Leopold’s Ghost is the true and haunting account of this man’s brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. It is also the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those responsible for this atrocity.

A new edition of Lauren Beukes's Arthur C Clarke Award-winning novel set in a world where murderers and other criminals acquire magical animals that are mystically bonded to them. Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. When a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, Zinzi's forced to take on her least favorite kind of job -- missing persons. Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell's undertow. Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she'll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives -- including her own.

The first book to present the latest discoveries on the behaviour, ecology and evolutionary biology of lorises and pottos.

The quilter, pattern designer, and author of Patchwork City offers 12 exciting new patterns designed to help you take your skills to the next level. Ready to go beyond the basics of creative quilting? In Modern Patchwork, pattern designer Elizabeth Hartman will help you expand your skills with new techniques and twelve new and innovative quilt designs. The projects in Modern Patchwork are bold, bright, graphic, and designed to give modern quilters new challenges. Along with her stunning patterns, Hartman introduces new skills and methods like curved seam piecing, working with hexagons, and machine applique. Plus, each project includes additional colorways so you can have fun with all your favorite fabrics.

This open access book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia—where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evil. We learn how this is articulated in spiritual warfare, in crusades, and in healing or witch-killing raids. The contributors highlight what happens to phenomena that people address as locally specific witchcraft or sorcery when re-molded within the universalist Pentecostal demonology, vocabulary, and confrontational methodology.

Positive images of Africa contrast with negative images of misery, war and catastrophes often conveyed by the mass media. This selection of papers debate the images and stereotypes of Africa.