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28 Books for Your Africa Reading List - Safaris, Politics, Culture, History, and More

In February, I traveled through South Africa and Tanzania, taking part in a few safaris while exploring Cape Town and unwinding in Zanzibar. Along the way I also spent a night in Nairobi, Kenya and got a brief tour of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. To prepare for the trip and expand my horizons while away, I read about 30 books on Africa. As I've done before with reading lists for Egypt and South America, your reading list for Africa is below, this time with 28 reviews and recommendations. Feel free to share other recommendations in the comments.

I need to thank two sources in particular that helped with this list. One is Amazon, from its references to the Kindle. With the flights to Zanzibar I could only take 33 lbs of luggage for a 17-day trip through varying climates, and the Kindle made reading so many books possible. Highlighted passages below all come from Kindle versions. The other is Idlewild Books, a Manhattan bookstore specializing in international books, and I picked up at least 10 books there from this selection alone; most aren't available on the Kindle, and the staff there is extremely sharp.     

South Africa

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
If you only read one book about Africa, this is it. Mandela's the hero, the change agent, the revolutionary, the larger than life inspiring figure you want him to be. The only thing more incredible than his autobiography is that when reading anything else about Africa, Mandela remains unblemished. This is also a book that anyone interested in leadership needs to read. 

Highlight:Of so many great quotes from Mandela, here's one that stands out: "Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another." 

Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog
This one will rank up there in terms of books that keep you up at night. Krog covers the Truth and Reconilliation Commission hearings in South Africa in the 1990s, and you feel the torture Krog endures by hearing and relaying the horrors and atrocities that happened in her country.  

Highlight: We all want to resign. We all yearn for another life. At Tzaneen a young Tswana interpreter is interviewed. He holds on to the tabletop; his other hand moves restlessly in his lap. “It is difficult to interpret victim hearings,” he says, “because you use the first person all the time. I have no distance when I say ‘I’ . . . it runs through me with ‘I.’ ” “Now how do you survive it?” “I don’t. After the first three months of hearings, my wife and baby left me because of my violent outbursts. The Truth Commission provided counseling and I was advised to stop. But I don’t want to. This is my history, and I want to be part of it—until the end. 

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
This is one of those books that I felt so privileged to read. If I hadn't gone on this trip I might never have found it, and it's undoubtedly one of the world's great works of poetry.What makes it chilling is that it was written right before the advent of apartheid, so it's this snapshot of South Africa before the country spirals even further downhill.

Highlight: We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
All you really need to know about this one is that it's like reading a Philip Roth novel set in South Africa. It's about a professor who can't control his prick (a term Roth would use, so it fits) and whose attempts at escaping his problems only cause more misery. It's less about South Africa than human nature, but that's also part of the fun of it - reading a book that's not a history lesson.

Favorite African Folktales edited by Nelson Mandela
You can often learn a lot about a country from its folktales, and the scope here is far wider than a country. It's a fun mix, but nothing here is as striking or well written as Kalila and Dimna from the Egypt roundup. If you're at all interested in folklore, go with Kalila - and if you're not, you might be after reading it.

The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
This is an odd book by one of South Africa's best known writers. Here, Julie falls for a Muslim mechanic and leaves her Sex and the City set for a life of Islam, Arabie, and destitution. While it's an interesting story at times, I never really got why Julie was acting the way she was - it seemed a little forced at most major junctures.

 

Zanzibar

Revolution in Zanzibar: An American's Cold War Tale by Donald Petterson
If you go to Zanzibar, or if you love Cold War history, you have to read this. You meet divinely inspired coup leaders, womanizing ambassadors, and world leaders as Petterson shares his first-hand experience from serving in the American consulate on Zanzibar during these revolutinoary days.

The Sultan's Shadow by Christiane Bird
Zanzibar's a surprising, even magical island, albeit with quite a few dark spots in its history. It was the capital of East Africa's slave trade, which picked up once the scion of an Omani dynasty discovered the riches from the islad's spice plantations, and slaves were needed to supply the island. The most ambitious of the island's sultans had a daughter who was quite the renegade, as running off with German men wasn't exactly de rigeur at the time for an Omani Zanzibari princess. Along with following the sultan and princess, we meet infamous black African slave trader Tippu Tip, British Christian anti-slavery crusader David Livingstone, and other leading figures of the day. While the narrative is all over the place, as a reader I felt enriched by having it cover so many angles. 

Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah 
While the book isn't set in Zanzibar, the author hails from there. Though you won't see this in the Amazon description, the story is remarkably similar to the biblical story of Joseph. The protagonist is even named Yusuf, and he's similar to his namesake in appearance and can interpret dreams. His father sells him into bondage (instead of Joseph's brothers - but really, it's the same plot line), and you know you can expect trouble when you meet the woman who resembles Potiphar's wife.  

 

General History: Colonial Period (starting around 16th/17th centuries) until Independence (around 1950s-60s)

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild
Belgium's King Leopold II is one of the world's least known genocidists, a mass murderer few can compare to, and one few heard of before Hochshild's best-seller. Edwin Morel, the hero of the book, was a British shipping executive who noticed a disparity in some records that led to a global anti-slavery crusade. Horrifying through and through, Hochshild is such a great storyteller that perhaps it's a little too much of a page-turner. 

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
I hadn't read this until this trip, and by the time I did, I had read so much about it that the novel itself was anticlimactic. Real life villains like King Leopold II are far scarier than anything in here. While the story itself's essential reading, I'm more impressed by what Conrad did and inspired than the work itself.   

Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist
Lindqvist journeys into Africa to explroe the meaning of the Heart of Darkness phrase, "Exterminate all the brutes." Where did that ideology originate, to treat people as animals or lesser evolved humans? How did it influence Hitler, and why do we focus on the Holocaust while ignoring other mass killings? There aren't easy answers but it's a thouhtful thought experiment.  

First Footsteps in East Africa by Sir Richard Burton
Sir Burton is clearly an outsized personality. Often, he's intoerably bigoted, putting down anyone and any tribe he meets with as he shares his theories of civilization. And yet, he has his moments, such as his understanding the dangers of pitting one tribe against another - this kind of action caused irreperable harm as the colonial powers left africa. It's great to have access to this work, but tough to swallow.

Highlight (well, more of a typical passage - hardly a highlight): The natives of the country are essentially commercial: they have lapsed into barbarism by reason of their political condition--the rude equality of the Hottentots,--but they appear to contain material for a moral regeneration. As subjects they offer a favourable contrast to their kindred, the Arabs of El Yemen, a race untameable as the wolf, and which, subjugated in turn by Abyssinian, Persian, Egyptian, and Turk, has ever preserved an indomitable spirit of freedom, and eventually succeeded in skaking off the yoke of foreign dominion

Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa by Martin Meredith
While well reviewed, this book of the Dutch history of South Africa was a bit of a slog for me. The basic history is important, and I enjoyed the character sketch of Cecil Rhodes, among others, but perhaps I was a little historied out by the time I read this. 

 

Modern Politics (post-colonial area, focused generally on 1950s-present)

The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence by Martin Meredith
This was the first sweeping work I read about Africa's modern history. You read the same story in country after country: Colonizing power props up a seemingly non-threatening but charismatic lackey; colonizing power makes a hasty exit before there are even a few hundred black Africans in the entire country with college degrees; former lackey pillages the country for his personal gain while playing Cold War rivals against each other to gain global standing; some kind of civil war, coup, and/or genocide ensues. A few break that pattern, usually with an educated leader who takes their responsibility more seriously (see Ghana, Botswana, Tanzania, and ultimately Mandela in South Africa) but not always successfully (Tanzania's Nyerere, for instance, took his socialist ideals too far, but at least he was one of few leaders to step down voluntarily when the economy crashed). This was the first such sweeping tome I read on Africa's modern history, and it was confusing to no end, but after a few such works I got the hang of it and can even put a few of these countries on a map. Yay.

Highlight: By the end of the 1980s, not a single African head of state in three decades had allowed himself to be voted out of office. Of some 150 heads of state who had trodden the African stage, only six had voluntarily relinquished power. 

The Challenge for Africa by Wangari Maathai
An incredible Kenyan woman who has served her country and continent in goverment, on foundations and through her writing, Maathai ultimately focuses on the Millennium Development Goals for Africa and why they won't be met by 2015. Especially powerful is when this 'green party' hero focuses on the environment and she makes a case for the positive ripple effects that stem from sustainability. 

Highlight: Before the arrival of the Europeans, Mount Kenya was called Kirinyaga, or “Place of Brightness,” by the people who lived in its shadow. The Kikuyus believed that God dwelled on the mountain, and that the rains, clean drinking water, green vegetation, and crops, all of which had a central place in their lives, flowed from it. When Christian missionaries arrived in the area toward the end of the nineteenth century, they told the local people that God did not live on Mount Kenya, but rather in heaven, and that the mountain and its forests, previously considered sacred grounds, could be encroached upon and the reverence accorded to them abandoned. The people believed this and were persuaded to consider their relationship with the mountain and, indeed, nature itself as primitive, worthless, and an obstacle to development and progress in an age of modernity and advances in science and technology. This did not happen only, of course, to the people who lived around Mount Kenya. Over the next generations, the reverence and spirit that had led the communities to preserve specific species of tree, like the wild fig, and the forests on Mount Kenya died away. When the white settlers and then the local communities themselves cut down the trees to plant coffee and tea and other agricultural products, encroaching farther and farther up the mountain, there was little resistance. From then on, they were seen as commodities only, to be privatized and exploited.

Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles by Richard Dowden
As great as this book is - the writer is a gifted wordsmith while focusing on many of the salient stories and perspectives that make this modern history lesson so memorable - I wish there were a few more ordinary miracles. As in so many of Africa's histories, they proved hard to find here.

Highlight: As John Robertson, a Zimbabwean economist, says, `We imagine corruption to be like a tick on a dog. There are some places in Africa where the tick is bigger than the dog.'

Highlight 2: Shakespeare would have found it easier to talk with modern Africans than modern Europeans and Americans who have no sense of anything beyond the physical realities of Western urban culture. Africans understand Shakespeare's woodland inhabited by sprites and fairies or by ghosts of dead fathers and other mystical apparitions. Living in harmony with the other world is important. 

China Safari by Sege Michel Michel Beuret
This was the first book I read in this crash course on Africa, and it's one of the best. It shows the complicated nature of the Chinese helping to build Africa while not letting morals get in the way of business decisions.

Highlight (proverbs): 
China: "When a tree is moved, it dies. When a man movies, he can make a fortune."
Mali: "If you see a goat at the mouth of the lion's den, fear the goat."

 

Memoirs

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin
Beautifully told, a reporter reminisces about his life primarily in Zimbabwe, where his parents survive endless diffuclties while staying attached to their country. There's also a memorable subplot, not to be disclosed here, as Godwin discovers the truth about his own heritage.

Highlight: I feel like weeping. Weeping at the way Africa does this to you. Just as you’re about to dismiss it and walk away, it delivers something so unexpected, so tender. One minute you’re scared shitless, the next you’re choked with affection. 

Highlight 2 (because I love folkore, and hippos): Of all the theories for the hippo’s antisocial behavior, my favorite is the one offered by the San, the Bushmen with whom I have recently spent so much time for National Geographic. They believe that the hippo was the last animal to be created and was made of parts left over from the construction of other beasts. When the hippo saw its reflection in the water, it was so ashamed of its ugliness that it begged the creator — Kaggan — to allow it to live underwater, out of sight. But Kaggan refused, worried that the hippo would eat up all the fish with its huge mouth. The hippo promised that it wouldn’t eat any living thing from the water, and Kaggan relented. A deal was struck that the hippo must return each night to the land to eat and to shit so that the other animals could examine its dung to ensure that there were no fish bones in it. The regular humiliation of public fecal inspection could well account for the hippo’s irascibility.

The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley
This is two memoirs in one. Half of the book has Hartley recounting the story of his Scottish father who 'went native' in Arabia and then East Africa, where he came to feel at home. It's intertwined with the author's autobiography of surviving as a journalist in some of the most hellish, war-torn conflicts.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run - True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison
It's not saying much to call this the funniest book I read about Africa, and one of the least depressing. If I got any nightmares reading about this, then they were about Japanese tourists. While the book starts off rough, fortunately Allison matures just enough with his experience as a guide to strengthen the narrative while sharpening the humor.

Highlight: Honey badgers belong to a group of only four animals that lions tend to avoid. The other three members are elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippos. 

 

African Fiction (general)

Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing by Rob Spillman
This is a useful guide to modern African writers. I bought a few of the books in this roundup after reading excerpts here, including Minaret and Half a Yellow Sun. I guess the con of the book is also a pro - a lot of the works were underwhelming, but that also meant I didn't have to read more from every writer in here.  

Highlight (from an introduction to the section on Mozambique and Angola, by the former's Mia Couto): I am a biologist and I travel a lot through my country’s savanna. In these regions, I meet people who don’t know how to read books. But they know how to read their world. In such a universe where other wisdoms prevail, I am the one who is illiterate. I don’t know how to read the signs in the soil, the trees, the animals. I can’t read clouds and the likelihood of rain. I don’t know how to talk to the dead, I’ve lost all contact with ancestors who give us our sense of the eternal. In these visits to the savanna, I learn sensitivities that help me to come out of myself and remove me from my certainties. In this type of territory, I don’t just have dreams. I am dreamable. 

Petals of Blood by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
A teacher, a socialist, and a prostitute walk into Abdullah's bar - no, not the beginning of a joke, but the setting for the Kenyan novelist's dark story about a fictional town that becomes a city, but with many sacrifices. We meet everyone from local robber barrons to colonialist missionaries. It picks up the pace considerably as it progresses. While I wound up loving this, I couldn't get into Thiong'o's other seminal work WIzard of the Crow, though if you read its reviews you'll see I'm in the minority

The Gunny Sack by MG Vassanji
Dubbed "Africa's answer to Midnight's Children, it's a fantastic romp through a couple family histories spannign India, Zanzibar, Eastern Africa, and a bit of teh west. And times it's too similar to Rushdie's work, and it lost me, but it's often lyrical and playful. While I enjoyed it, it wasn't as memorable for me as most of the others.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
This was, I'm embarrassed to admit, the only book from this list I read before planning the Africa trip, thanks to my Mamaroneck High School teacher Shannon Turner-Porter (if you're Googling yourself, Mrs. Porter, thank you). The book itself takes a little while to get going, but once it lives up to its title and things really start falling apart in the second half, we see why antihero Okonkwo emerges as one of the most renowned protagonists in African fiction.

Highlight: We approach a great man through his servants. But when his servants fail to help us, then we go to the last source of hope. We appear to pay greater attention to the little gods but that is not so. We worry them more because we are afraid to worry their Master. Our fathers knew that Chukwu was the Overlord and that is why many of them gave their children the name Chukwuka—“Chukwu is Supreme.” “You said one interesting thing,” said Mr. Brown. “You are afraid of Chukwu. In my religion Chukwu is a loving Father and need not be feared by those who do His will.” “But we must fear Him when we are not doing His will,” said Akunna. “And who is to tell His will? It is too great to be known.”

Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop
This Senagelese writer joined a creative mission in the late 1990s to venture into Rwanda and tell its stories. His book is so haunting that I had several horrific nightmares reading it. It's a sort of As I Lay Dying, told from several perspectives of those grappling with the genocide, and it is one of those works that makes me appreciate how revealing fiction can be to elucidate actual events.

Highlight (referring to the calls for genocide broadcast casually over the radio - the "work" here means exterminating people): The radio says: "My friends, they have dared to kill our good president Habyarimana, the hour of truth is at hand!" Then there're some music and games. The host of the program, in brilliant form, quizzes his listeners: "How do you recognize an Inyenzi?" The listeners call in. Some of the answers are really funny, so we have a good laugh. Everyone gives a description. The host becomes serious again, almost severe: "Have fun, my friends, but don't forget the work that's waiting for you!"

Minaret: A Novel by Leila Aboulela
It's a sad story (surprise) as a Sudanese family falls apart following the father's demise in a regime change. It is an often wonderful portrait of life in different eras of Sudan's modern society, and of a wealthy heiress who finds herself barely scraping by. The protagonist is hard to pity too much though, making her own mistakes to the point where religion alone won't save her. 

Highlight: All the ingratiating manners, the downcast eyes, the sideway movements of the servants I grew up with. I used to take them for granted. I didn't know a lot about them - our succession of Ethiopian maids, houseboys, our gardener - but I must have been close to them, absorbing their ways, so that now, years later and in another continent, I am one of them. 

What is the What by Dave Eggers
Wow. This book, recommended by Joe Kutchera, was the last one I read on Africa and may complete my reading for awhile, though of course it'll never end. It's the true story of a Sudanese "Lost Boy" who survives one outbreak of the North-South civil war only to find that war was the new normal. It's a true story, but billed as fiction as the narrator, Valentino Achak Deng, had a few holes in his memory. The two make a gifted pair, and I constantly wanted to flip ahead pages and chapters when Eggers was leaving me hanging.

Highlight: What did she look like, my mother? I had only a shifting memory, as light as linen, and the longer I was with this woman Ajulo, the more distant and indistinguishable my vision of my mother would become. I told Ajulo I could not be her son, but she fed me still. I came once a week and helped how I could, bringing her water, portions of my rations, things she could not otherwise procure. I went there and she fed me and let me lie in her lap. During those hours I was a boy with a home.

That's a wrap. Be sure to leave your favorite picks in the comments or tweet me, and if there's a Kindle version of a book here that can be loaned (most I've found can't yet), I'm happy to do so.

Today's Read: 10 Ways to Cultivate Your Community

I took a few minutes to read through 10 Ways to Cultivate Your Community, a new brief e-book by Jeremy Epstein of Never Stop Marketing fame. Actually, at first I skimmed it, which only proved to be mildly useful, but then reading it in full, I started to appreciate how much information's really in here.

If you're a solo practitioner or running your business and really excited to market the business or yourself better, you need to read this. If you're managing communities or social strategy for a larger brand, some parts are less relevant, but there's enough that will matter for your day job, and you'll still likely appreciate the rest for your own career.

The ebook's a free PDF, easily shareable via http://bit.ly/growfanspdf , so read it when you have a chance, and if you like it, thank @jer979.

20+ Reading Recommendations for South America - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru

When I travel internationally, I try to read a fair amount of non-fiction and literature about the country, including works by many indigenous authors. Last year, for instance, I published areading list for Egypt. 

This year, I wound up taking two trips to South America, covering sixcountries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay. My biggest trip of the year was to Peru and Ecuador, and then spent shorter amounts of time in the other countries (Uruguay was a last minute day trip from Argentina).

Below are my favorites from each country. I note the specific country that the book relates to if it's not obvious from the title. Others that don't list a country are about the continent or region as a whole.

Links go to Amazon. Especially if you’re in New York City, I’d also highly recommend visiting Idlewild Books for their selection and suggestions on books relating to anywhere you might travel: http://www.idlewildbooks.com/ .

Feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments.

Anthologies

• The Peru Reader edited by Orin Starn, Ivan Degregori and Robin Kirk
  • If you’re going to Peru and really want a taste of the history and literature, start with this, a sweeping compilation of historical essays, fictional excerpts, poetry, and other entries to give a sense of the breadth of Peruvian culture. It’s a great starting point to discover what else you’ll want to read, and I discovered several authors here whose works are in this list.
• The Ecuador Reader edited by Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler
  • See the Peru Reader description. It’s just as good, just Ecuadorian.
• Additional Readers (I haven’t read any of these others):
  • You can find many other readers listed on the Duke University Press site for travel books (including Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Russia, Mexico, Czech, Sri Lanka, and Alaska Native). Oddly Peru isn’t listed there, but it’s easily available on Amazon. You can find Peru in the Latin American Reader section and others in the World Reader section.

Fiction

• The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
  • The mysteries of the universe are revealed under a staircase. A prisoner discovers the power of God. A man embarks on a quest for immortality. These are some of the thought puzzles Borges plays with in this collection. Even as some stories failed to grab me, others ended with dazzling flashes of light.
• At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen
  • One of the best known books on the list thanks to the feature film based on it (let alone the author’s two National Book Awards), it’s a very dark piece of fiction exploring a series of awakenings, some on the part of Christian missionaries seeking converts in the South American jungle, as well as that of a local who finds a sense of purpose when he joins a native tribe. At its best, this book is a twisted exploration of human nature when people are torn from their usual surroundings.
• Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
  • If you read any Peruvian literature, you have to start with Vargas Llosa, the prolific national novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. Death in the Andes is dark and bizarre, and it will help to read up on the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) for context beforehand. For a very different read, I’d recommend trying Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral, but it’s so sweeping that it kept losing me (for instance, people would refer to some characters separately by their first and last names and never clarify it’s the same person). It made more sense when I skimmed it again after reading it.
• Deep Rivers by Jose Maria Arguedas (Peru)
  • A teenage boy heads to boarding school in the outskirts of Cusco as he tries to figure out to what extent he identifies with his elite, Christian classmates versus the indigenous population. A semi-autobiographical perspective, there’s poetry on every page especially when the protagonist continually reconnects with his natural surroundings. This was one of my favorites.
• Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado (Brazil)
  • A 1920s Brazilian town is torn asunder by a series of events, from homicide to the arrival of a beautiful woman. It’s a wonderful read, but one of the least memorable for me among those here. Part of my problem with it is that I couldn’t stop comparing it to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of my favorite writers, and it just made me want to read 100 Years of Solitude again.
• Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon (Peru)
  • Norma’s the voice of Peru for those who lost loved ones during the military clashes with domestic terrorists in the 1980, and she’s lost someone herself. A young boy who arrives at the radio station makes her mission all the more personal. Norma’s one of the best protagonists I’ve read about in fiction in some time, and this novel stuck with me more than most others.
• Peruvian Traditions by Ricardo Palma
  • Palma used a form of storytelling dubbed a “tradition” to combine history with allegory. Some stories can be considered folklore that incorporates elements of Peru’s history, while other stories can be considered historical sketches with touches of folklore. It is useful to be more familiar with Peruvian history before reading this book, but it’s still easy to appreciate how Palma’s a master of his craft.
• Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda (Chile)
  • Want a taste of why Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature? This is a great way to start the exploration, and the book’s available with the original Spanish and the English translation side by side, so those who know at least a bit of Spanish will appreciate glancing at the original text. Most surprising: this book was published when the author was 20. Beyond the wonders of Neruda’s talent, how could he know so much about passion, love, and longing at such a young age?
• The Villagers (Huasipungo) by Jorge Icaza (Ecuador)
  • In the novel, Icaza describes what was a familiar scenario for many native inhabitants of Ecuador when Spanish or half-Spanish hacienda owners sought new territory and labor. In this story, neither the landlord nor the native protagonist are totally sure what roles they need to play, and it leads to increasingly dire outcomes. It wasn’t my favorite read from a South American author, but it is a quick and often heartbreaking perspective.

Non-Fiction

• The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir by Fernando Henrique Cardoso
  • Cardoso led a number of lives before becoming president: sociology professor, exile, and finance minister, to name a few. He was hardly groomed to be the leader of the country but dove headfirst into challenges of stabilizing the economy and improving the quality of life. He’s candid about himself and others, especially regarding his roller coaster relationship with Lula, who succeeded him, so it’s not the typical watered down bore of a memoir we’ve come to expect from our leaders in the US.
• And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) by Paul Blustein (Argentina)
  • This book is partially about Argentina’s financial crisis and partially about the inner workings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Neither gets off easy here, and it won’t bolster confidence in how decisions are made to attempt to prop up economies.
• Four Years among the Ecuadorians by Friedrick Hassaurek
  • Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to Ecuador provides one of the best glimpses into the country in the 19^th century. It’s unintentionally funny, as he’s constantly miserable (his first choice was to go to Switzerland), and he claims most of what he admires about the country came from the United States. This proved to be one of my favorite books, as it’s a thrill that we have access to such writing today.
• The Heart That Bleeds by Alma Guillermoprieto
  • This internationally acclaimed journalist collects her writings for The New Yorker in this anthology spanning the late 1980s and early 1990s. She discusses Escobar’s terrorism of Colombia, political scandals in Argentina, garbage pickers in Mexico City, the rise and fall of the Shining Path in Peru, Panama City’s love-hate relationship with the United States, and other pivotal moments in modern Latin American history. It’s a crash course from a gifted writer.
• The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie
  • This was the first book I read about Peru, a gripping story of the Inca empire and its downfall largely since the day Francisco Pizarro arrived. It was also when I first appreciated that tragic as the Inca story was, it was largely a case of one warring empire trumping another. For those who haven’t read it, it’s worth reading Guns, Germs and Steel for some added context.
• Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien: A Yanqui’s Missteps in Argentina  by Brian Winter
  • Take a fun romp through Buenos Aires as a young American visits Argentina, tries to learn the tango, and shares the history of various prominent elements of the country’s culture and people. His personal story is entertaining enough, and the history adds more substance, so together it proves to be a good balance.
• Man of Ashes by Salomon Isacovici (Ecuador)
  • A Romanian Holocaust survivor recounts life before and during the horrors, and then picks up his story afterwards in Ecuador. It’s often reminiscent of Primo Levi, and nearly as well written.
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (Ecuador)
  • Admittedly this wasn’t my favorite read. When Darwin goes on for five pages about some species that I’m not sure whether it’s a bird or plant, it’s tough to stay with him. Yet by reading the original text, you get a sense of all the various disciplines of study Darwin mastered, and all the leading experts around the globe he communicated with to further his own research. Going to the Galapagos is a good excuse to dive into this if you haven’t read it.
• Santiago’s Children by Steve Reifenberg (Chile)
  • Reifenberg spent two years in the 1980s working at a small Chilean orphanage. Told as a series of short essays, this fairly short book makes you feel like you know many of the dozen-plus children of the orphanage. An epilogue mentions how they fared twenty years later.
• Viva South America! A Journey Through a Restless Continent by Oliver Balch
  • A reporter travels across the continent, often well off the beaten path, to hear stories of those from all walks of life, with a focus on those who haven’t fared as well from the imprisoned to tortured to abused. The breadth he covers is tremendous, and compared with many other books I’ve read lately from reporters traveling internationally, he keeps his subjects at the center and minimizes his own role in the story.
• The White Rock by Hugh Thomson (Peru)
  • An aimless, young Brit took up archaeology and emerged as one of the more accomplished explorers of recent decades. He’s also a gifted storyteller, tying together the Inca history with his own modern adventures.

 

12 Smart Things about "Empowered" by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

I finished reading the book Empowered by Forrester Research's Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler a few weeks ago, maybe longer, and I've been meaning to blog about it. At the time, it was information overload, and it was a bit hard to totally separate it from Bernoff's previous work Groundswell and Charlene Li's tome Open Leadership released earlier this year.

Then I returned to my old habit of writing book reports. I keep a journal with write-ups on every book I've read, going back a number of years. Some books get a paragraph, some get pages. For Empowered, I had a big repository of notes, or at least highlights... on my Kindle. If you go to kindle.amazon.com, you can review your highlights, along with the most popular highlights from other readers (see the popular picks from Empowered here).

Reviewing the highlights made me appreciate the book far more. Okay, I had a few bones to pick with it. For instance, there were those moments of Forresterspeak. My favorite example of this is the "effort-value evaluation" or "EVE," which is really just a cost-benefit analysis, but Forrester analysts never met an acronym they couldn't rename.

Ultimately though, it proved to be a valuable read, both the first time and in review. Here are some takeaways, culled from my own Kindle highlights, not whatever hoi polloi thought.

1. Empowering employees is critical. "To succeed with empowered customers, you must empower your employees to solve customer problems."

2. Business models are changing. "Companies that made their money from having better information than their customers are now out of luck."

3. Employees can be empowered in the same way customers are thanks to four technologies:

- "Smart mobile devices extend connected experiences everywhere, independent of location"

- Video has increased the depth of the "media experience" online

- Cloud computing allows any device to tap into the Internet's computing power and network

- "Social technology has exploded—more than ever, people can influence and draw power from their peers.

4. There's a four-step process for delivering 'groundswell' programs going by the acronym "IDEA": "identify mass influencers, deliver groundswell customer service, empower customers with mobile information, and amplify the voice of your fans." "Find the people who love you, and boost the impact they have on their peers."

5. Focus on customers above all else. "The closer you get to making customers more empowered and happier, the easier it will be to justify your project."

6. Consumers are vocal, and their influence adds up. They create 256 billion impressions talking about products and services in social networks. In blogs, forums, and review sites, consumers generate 1.64 billion posts and over 250 billion impressions (60% from discussion forums, ratings, and reviews), adding up to over half a trillion impressions in the US. "People receive roughly one-fourth as many impressions from each other as they do from online advertisers. Which ones do you think they pay attention to?"

7. You have to pay attention to people who influence others online. "Make no mistake: mass influencers are a channel. You can let them say whatever they want... and then react. Or you can work proactively to get them sharing messages in line with your strategy."

8. Young adults are especially influential in social networks and share disproportionately. They're 12% of the online population but account for 30% of influence impressions in social networks, and create 16% of influence posts in blogs, forums, and reviews.

9. A sale is just the beginning with today's marketing funnel. After the fact you can make customers feel good about doing business with you and generate advocacy. "Influence begins after the sale."

10. Influential consumers are mobile. "Mass Connectors and Mass Mavens are almost twice as likely to use the mobile Web as other consumers. Conversely, when we look at mobile Web users, they are far more likely to have influence. They’re an attractive and influential group of consumers, from nearly every perspective."

11. Fan base cultivation is like brand building - it's a long-term process that never ends.

12. "Customer service is marketing." 'Nuff said.

Googley Lessons from Author Aaron Goldman

I knew Aaron Goldman when he was just some search-loving punk in short pants who'd crash the Search Insider Summits. Look at him now, a published author, free agent, and blog tourer.

To celebrate the debut his new book, Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google, he invited me to join his blog tour where he's appearing on 30 blogs in 10 days. We discussed Barack Obama, the lessons he's both applying and struggling with, and why the book isn't called Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Webcrawler (hint: the answer to that last one is NOT that the book name was taken).

The back of the book screams out, “Barack Obama Googled his way to the top of the political ladder.” Obama’s an interesting case study. What do you mean by that, and how should Obama use Google today now that his reputation has taken a hit?

 

I use Obama as the prime example in chapter 5, “Be Where Your Audience is.”  The idea is that you can’t expect your audience come to you or your branded destination. You have to take your brand to the place(s) the people you want to reach spend time and interact with them in that environment on their terms.

 

Google does this by making its search tools available wherever people are connected to the internet -- desktop, browser, toolbar, phone, etc. You don’t have to go to Google.com to google something.

 

During the 2008 campaign, Obama engaged his audience on a number of levels and in a number of places. His social media efforts were dizzying -- Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. The man was everywhere. Offline too. Along the way, he and his campaign did a great job of “laddering” up support.

 

In the book, I share the story of Scott Kier, who volunteered for the campaign and canvassed in Detroit. It was interesting to see how Scott was “laddered” up the chain from personal supporter to social supporter to full-on advocate.

 

So the idea that Obama Googled his way to the top of the ladder is a bit of a play on words, something I do quite a bit on the book. I’ve been told I have a pun-derful writing style.

 

As for what Obama should do now, I’m not going to take the bait and get political. But I will say I’ve been impressed that he’s continued to use social media to spread his message and push his agenda.

 

Is this book available in Google Book Search? If not, what are you waiting for?

 

I’m currently the #1 listing on Books.Google.com for “Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google.”

 

But I suspect you’re asking if I’ve made the full text available to Google, aye?

 

Alas, that’s out of my hands and something for my publisher to decide. I’m not sure what McGraw-Hill’s  policy is here but, if they asked for my opinion, I’d tell them not to do it.

 

I know, I know. I’m such a hypocrite. Chapter 17 is “Show Off Your Assets” and I advocate for digitizing and distributing everything. But I don’t want Google profiting from my work.

 

Sheesh, I sound like Rupert Murdoch!

 

In what ways are you applying the lessons of this book to promoting it?

 

In chapter 5 I talk about the “Hub and Spoke model” that Obama used in his campaign.

 

I’ve put that into play with my book by creating a hub at GoogleyLessons.com and setting up spokes where my audience is -- Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, this blog and the 29 others included in my “blog tour.”

 

My goal is to engage potential readers wherever they happen to be and give them some valuable content that will make them want to spend more time -- specifically 341 pages of time -- with me.

 

Did you learn anything from Yahoo or Bing or Ask.com or Webcrawler or Dogpile? Anything at all?

 

I learned a lot of what NOT to do from these guys.

 

Yahoo - how NOT to quit when you’re down. (Competing with Google on search is tough. We give up!)

 

Bing - how NOT to overpromise and underdeliver. (Decision engine? Hardly.)

 

Ask.com - how NOT to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (I miss Jeeves!)

 

Webcrawler - how NOT to do M&A. (AOL, Excite, InfoSpace, oh my!)

 

Dogpile - how NOT to create a brand. (Tell me you’re not picturing a pile of dog sh*t!)

 

Of the lessons you write as your chapter title, which do you have the hardest time following?

 

“Let the Data Decide.” I have a bit of Don Draper in me. Sometimes I just want to say, “Screw the research” (although Draper would also screw the researcher) and go with my gut.

 

Have you figured out how to autograph e-book editions of this?

 

I think there’s a new sharpie that will do the trick. Can I test it on your iPad?

 

What would Google do? Just asking…

 

Hire me? Just sayin’…

 

 

The Facebook Effect: Even More Fun Than Spending a Few Hours on Facebook

I had no interest in reading The Facebook Effect, the new book from David Kirkpatrick. I spend way too much time on Facebook as is, and when I'm not spending time on it, I'm working on a client's Facebook program or reading about all the latest news. Why would I want to read a book about the damn thing?

It turns out I had a very good reason: I was serving on a panel with him so I had to read the book in advance. If only everyone could find such a good excuse.

The real joy reading the book came from watching Mark Zuckerberg's revelation as the genius that he is, working with a few equally gifted youngsters and ultimately some very supportive older mentors to unleash Mark's vision on the world. It's inspiring, and truly amazing. Luck may have played a role, but what's more striking is how great decision making - from people who often had little experience making such decisions - played a tremendous role. It's not just people who built a somewhat better network and managed to get ahead; these were people who believed in a vision and had the brains and balls to carry it out. And several weren't even 20 when they started doing so.

Then there's the latter part of the book, which is very good and interesting, though not quite as inspiring. Kirkpatrick focused extensively on Facebook's approach to privacy - along with its missteps, and the development of its advertising-focused revenue model. These chapters felt a bit more like work, which is fine since I love my job, and if you find debates about privacy particularly touching maybe you'll like it more than me.

It's clearly written for a business audience. That's a shame in a sense, as it really could be two books - the version of it that's a riches to megariches tale of a kid pursuing his dreams, which would have much wider appeal and just about any Facebook user friend of mine would love it. Then there's the rest, and it's hard to recommend that too broadly. But readers of the blog should appreciate it.

And while I am publishing this an hour before sharing a stage (or a table) with Kirkpatric, I'd be just as glowing if I wasn't. It shouldn't have taken that much motivation to get me to read it, and with any luck you'll be a little less hesitant now. I actually read relatively few business books these days (while reading as much as ever in general) so I have to choose carefully, and this was well worth the time spent with it.

The Age of Conversation 3 is Here! Ready to Join It?

 
It's about time.

You marveled at Age of Conversation 1.

You thought the sequel, Age of Conversation 2, couldn't be better... and it was.

And now, it's finally here, a day you've been waiting for: Age of Conversation 3 is here, a collaborative book with a range of perspectives on social media. Yes, mine's in there - I've had the pleasure of joining all three of this so far. You can see the full list of authors and their locations here. You should read all of their blogs too, if you have a few thousand hours to kill.

Here's a relatively quick summary from the official announcement:

Almost three years ago, an online conversation between two marketing pros... evolved into a collaborative writing effort by more than 100 bloggers from nine countries, and was aptly titled The Age of Conversation. Fast forward to today and the abstract experiment is now a concrete treatise on the state of social media and marketing best practices as a whole.

Age of Conversation 3 (202 pages; hardcover; paperback; Kindle; ePub) was published by new digital publishing company Channel V Books (www.ChannelVBooks.com), and is now available through all major online retailers, as a Kindle e-book, and will soon be available as an ePub for other digital readers.

Age of Conversation 3 captures the distinct shift from social media as a hypothetical consumer loyalty tool, as it was considered only a little more than a year ago, to its current state as a staple in the modern marketing toolbox. Although the book covers more than just social media, the topic is ubiquitous among the book’s 10 sections: At the Coalface; Identities, Friends and Trusted Strangers; Conversational Branding; Measurement; Corporate Conversations; In the Boardroom; Innovation and Execution; Influence; Getting to Work; and Pitching Social Media.

The first Age of Conversation raised nearly $15,000 for Variety, the international children's charity, and the Age of Conversation 2 raised a further $10,000 for Variety. This year’s proceeds will be donated to an international children’s charity of our authors’ choosing.

 

Manifesto Review: How to Fame - At Its Best when Fame Takes a Backseat to Personal Branding

Richard Laermer, founder and CEO of RLM PR and no stranger to fame, just published a manifesto of sorts through Change This, How to Fame: Stand Out/Get Ahead/That Simple. I've enjoyed a lot of Laermer's work since reading his book Full Frontal PR years back, though I was a little hesitant to dive into something about fame, a subject that can get a little too shallow for my tastes, especially in a how-to guide.

This latest publication had two things going for it:

First, it's short. I could stomach fifteen pages on fame from him.

Second, and more importantly, it's not really about fame. Or, the definition of fame here is so different from how I tend to think of it. Instead, it's a guide to personal branding, a subject I find far more useful, universal, and meaningful than trying to be famous for fame's sake.

On to the notes:

Page 7 has the best summary, the one some people may want to print out and stick on their cubicle or office wall. Laermer calls it the 'keys to fame,' but I don't think there's much relating to fame in authenticity, proactivity, and polish.

The publication felt like two separate stories

 

1) There's 1-11 and 14-17 (combined). These sections seemed like they were about personal branding and authenticity. I'm not sure what the difference here is between either of those concepts (take your pick) and what was referenced here as fame. I'm not even sure why the word fame's involved.

 

2) There's 12-13, which is all about fame, and specifically Internet fame - "You say you want to be an internet star?" it beckons. I get how authenticity helped the people featured here, but it also seems like there's more to it for them, and for them it wasn't just about being more fulfilled in their jobs. That might make for a good story in its own right, but it's completely separate, and I could do without it here.

As for the personal branding part, Frank's story that you'll read is more grounded, and there's some useful advice and good reminders, and it's worth at least a few minutes checking it out, if not far more time should it resonate.

 

Book Review: Open Leadership by Charlene Li

 

At South by Southwest, one of my many serendipitous reactions was with Charlene Li, who I knew well when she was with Forrester. This was perhaps the first time I saw her in person since she foudned the Altimeter Group, and she had a present for me: a galley of her forthcoming book Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead.

For those who've been to SXSW or anything remotely like it, needing to carry a book around all night where I was likely to hit another three bars or clubs in the subsequent five hours or so would normally be a chore. But these is Charlene, coauthor of Groundswell, which I called in 2008 "the best book on social media I've ever read." Groundswell still is, and few others have made it to my recommendation list. So when Charlene handed me a sneak preview, I unflinchingly accepted. Note that my comments below are all based on the galley, an uncorrected proof that's subject to change, so accept that some of the quotes may be fine-tuned between now and the book's release.

Now, I'll be totally honest. Her new book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, is not Groundswell. It's as well written and structured - you can Charlene out of Forrester but you can't take the Forrester out of Charlene. Yet Groundswell had something going for it that few other books do: universality. Groundswell's a book I still give or lend to people when they're just starting to get into the social media field, and I recommend it to people who are experienced practioners (though most in the latter camp have already read it). It's a data and case study driven field manual for social media.

Open Leadership is something else - no worse, just more focused. If you're not leading a business, a lot of the book won't apply to you. If you're aspiring to be in such a leadership position, it will be fairly relevant. If that's not your focus or won't be some time, you can skip over the better part of the book without regret.

Those leading organizations, however, will find a lot of ways to be inspired by the book. It's no manifesto for openness. In her Organizational Models for Openness, she describes several approaches:

• Organic: developing without much direction and often without oversight
• Centralized: top-down from executive management
• Coordinated: starts with some kind of executive direction but then takes its own forms at the department level on down

She also describes four types of decision-making: Centralized, Democratic, Consensus, and Distributed. What's telling is that she's not judging what's the best approach for every organization. Different forms of openness will benefit different companies and structures in different ways.

She does pass judgment on the traits of open leaders themselves, noting which are more effective. For instance, she writes, "The Realist Optimist is the most powerful and effective of the open leader archetypes, somebody who can see the benefits of being open but also understands the barriers." She constrasts this archetype with others such as the Transparent Archetype, "optimitic and individualistic," a believer "in the ability of new technologies to transform people and organizations," and yet "they don't understand who technology needs to be coordinated or collaborated inside the organization to make things happen effectively."

One of my favorite axioms in the book is one of those paradoxes that constantly fascinates me: "The reason to get proactive about giving up control is that by doing so you can actually regain some semblance of control." It speaks to a classic fear many marketers have with social media. But yet the only way to get any control over how your brand or organization plays in the conversations and sharing that are happening is to have your own stake in it and get your own voice out.

The section on measurement is also one of my favorites, and one of the more broadly useful for marketers. I've already been quoting one line on the book regarding the return on investment concerns. In my favorite metaphor of the book, she writes, "As you try to measure the benefits and 'ROI' of a deeper dialog and relationship with customers, you must realize that you can't even begin to calculate the benefit of protecting your organization in a real time communication world. Another way to frame the issue is to ask what is the ROI on your fire insruance policy? Going without can't even be contemplated!"

There's plenty more to say on this one, and I still have to make sense of all of my notes on it. You can read more at Charlene's site on Open Leadership, If enough of this seems relevant to you and you wind up picking up a copy, share your thoughts in the comments. 

Why You Probably Don't Need to Read Seth Godin's New Book Linchpin - Unless You Do

Image by http://www.prestonlee.com/archives/67 via CrunchBase

I'm going to keep this book review fairly short because it won't take much to convey whether you should read Seth Godin's new book.

You probably already know who Seth Godin is, so I'll skip that.

Maybe you heard he has a new book out. It's called Linchpin. The most remarkable thing about it, and Seth loves talking about being remarkable, is how he marketed it. He offered 3,000 preview copies to anyone who donated at least $30 to his pet cause The Acumen Fund, which helps address global poverty. I was more interested in the cause than the book, and I'm very happy I donated a little more than the minimum and participated. I wasn't the only one who gave more, as Seth raised over $100,000 just for this, and probably much more.

So about the book...

You should read it if...

• You hate your job
• You hate your life
• You just need some kind of pick me up
• You like self-help
• You will read anything that Godin writes ever

You should not read it if...

• You're reasonably happy
• You can't stand self-help books
• You don't get why people are so into self-help books
• You were expecting a marketing book and not a self-help book

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm not a huge devotee of the self-help genre. But I do appreciate that there are times when anyone needs someone to motivate them to do a little more, be a little better, live life a little fuller - stuff like that. If you need this, read it. If not, eh...

Your call.