John Lonsdale

Mau Mau Crucible of War is a study of the social and cultural history of the mentalité of struggle in Kenya, which reached a high water mark during the Mau Mau war of the 1950s, but which continues to resonate in Kenya today in the ongoing demand for a decent standard of living and social justice for all. This work catalyzes intellectual debate in various disciplines regarding not just the evolution of the Kenyan state, but also, the state in Africa. It not only engages historians of colonial and postcolonial economic and political history, but also sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and those who study personality and social branches of psychology, postcolonialism and postmodernity, social movements, armed conflict specialists, and conflict resolution analysts.

"Pulling our cloaks tighter against the encroaching cold, the scholar began to tell us the first of the wondrous tales she had learned from the Library." Tales from the Library is a collection of ninety-five tiny tales, each of told in an unusual two-part format." He is enjoying driving in these conditions as much as I enjoyed my one and only attempt at being a trapeze artist, back when I was undercover at Hall's circus, working the Big Top murder case." These 'Tiny tales in two parts' are short stories chronicling the adventures of an unlikely group of protagonists. "Numerous salivating mouths desperately gasped the stale air as it laboriously manoeuvred into its elevated position." Whilst at the dark edges of their world, adversaries play out centuries-long games of strategy in which humanity is just an unwitting pawn. "Deep inside the approaching warheads, the arming processes will have commenced." Different stories, from different times - together they make up the Tales from the Library...

Argentina is a fascinating and endlessly varied country. This book accounts of three visits, the first of which was a three-month tour of the north of the country, collecting plants for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This first visit encouraged me to undertake two further visits while still employed by Kew Gardens. Because of these botanical connections, there is a wealth of references to the fabulous flora of the region. Flora can't exist in isolation to fauna, and animal life is discussed whenever it is chanced upon. Several exciting episodes imposed themselves into what became increasingly eventful journeys.

Based on the Gikuyu-language pamphlet literature of the 1940s, the family history of the writer Henry Muoria, and a daughter's memory, this book illuminates the political challenges faced by Kenya's first nationalists and the domestic sacrifices that politics demanded

A considerable revision in the understanding of the history of colonial Kenya and, more widely, colonialism in Africa. In the sister two volumes entitled Unhappy Valley 1 and Unhappy Valley 2, the authors investigate major themes including the conquest origins and subsequent development of the colonial state, the contradictory socialforces that articulated African societies to European capitalism, and the creation of new political communities and changing meanings of ethnicity in Africa, in the context of social differentiation and class formation. There issubstantial new work on the problems of Mau Mau and of wealth, poverty and civic virtue in Kikuyu political thought. The authors make a fresh contribution to a deeper historical understanding of contemporary Kenyan society and, in particular, of the British and Kikuyu origins of Mau Mau and the emergency of the 1950s. They also highlight some of the shortcomings of ideas about development, explore the limitations of narrowly structuralist Marxisttheory of the state, and reflect on the role of history in the future of Africa. North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP WINNER OF THE TREVOR REESE MEMORIAL PRIZE 1994