Book reviews: Can you really summarise a giant continent in 463 pages? Zeinab Badawi, a Sudanese-British journalist, travelled to more than 30 countries and conducted dozens of interviews for An African History of Africa(WH Allen). It’s not an academic book, nor one of “contested history”, she says, but an attempt at a “more honest” view of the place from which all humans originated. She opens by meeting “missing link” hominid Lucy, or Dinkenesh as she’s known in Africa. She visits Tanzania’s traditional hunter-gatherers the Hadzabe, and examines the ancient civilisations of Egypt and its neighbours, West Africa’s kingdoms, trading in enslaved people, the great societies of Benin, Zimbabwe and the Asante, and European colonialism.
An African History of Africa. Photo / supplied
If race is the best proxy for disadvantage as a class, it ought to be used in policy-making, says Coleman Hughes, but it’s not. Any socioeconomic measure – income, deprivation – is better, he says. In The End of Race Politics (Thesis), this young black American writer and podcaster argues for a “colour-blind” approach to public policies. Race, he argues, is a social construct inspired by a biological reality. We still need to guard against overt racism, he says, but you can’t assume unequal outcomes are indicative of it. It’s a deeply American book, but the questions it raises (Act would probably support many of the book’s arguments, Te Pāti Māori would almost certainly not) are more universal.
The End of Race Politics. Photo / supplied
Another journalist who’s segued seamlessly into crime writing is Michael Brissenden. The ex-Australian ABC veteran has written Smoke (Hachette). A body is found in a shed in the California sierras, presumably the victim of a fierce wildfire, until it’s discovered the shed was locked from the outside. Enter former resident Detective Alex Markov, who discovers a town crooked to its core. It’s been blurbed to the skies by the likes of Chris Hammer and Don Winslow.
