Alumni Travel Reading 2018-2019: Botswana

"The essential guide for identifying Southern Africa's most visible wildlife", including birds, mammals, snakes, lizards, and insects.

Available in print and for Nook (in HarperCollins imprint) and other e-readers.

A brick of a book with 213 color plates depicting more than 950 bird species.

An old standard, describing 86 species with an emphasis on observable behaviors.

Also available for Kindle and Nook

A slim book that covers the common and conspicuous mammals, birds, frogs and reptiles, and trees in Chobe National Park.

"The first birding guide written by a Botswana-based ornithologist and the only one dedicated specifically to Botswana." 255 color plates showing all 597 bird species known.

An inexpensive field guide that includes a brief introductory chapter on the delta's geology and topography, climate, dynamics and habitats.

A slim book with full-page photos focused on 50 species found in the Okavango Delta.

Author David McDermott Hughes brings readers a comprehensive account of the lasting effects of European colonialism within South Africa, touching upon ideas and arguments surrounding development policy and environmentalism, and how native land can be saved.

A fundamental look at how the 'green' movement, aimed at sustainable development, can invigorate itself within the land of Zimbabwe without compromise of cultural components.

A composition of arguments against the European management and colonization of museums across Zimbabwe, which writers suggest must attain urgent attention to promote, and fight for, the preservation of Zimbabwean culture.

"An engaging and timely ethnography" that balances the role of kagiso, the national ethos of "peace and harmony", with interethnic tension and disunity, in the context of Batswana livelihoods in the Okavango Delta region.

A scholarly work that illustrates how the political environmental context shapes human health through case studies of HIV management in South Africa and global climate change seen in increased flooding in the Okavango Delta.

The third bestseller for general readers by these longtime Kalahari naturalists working in Botswana's Kalahari Game Reserve and the Luangwa Conservation Project, Zambia.

Also available for Kindle and Nook.

One of the African continent's most stunning creatures is placed in its historical, cultural, zoological, and photographic glory in this coffe-table sized book.

Also available for Kindle and Nook.

A slim book about Zimbabwe's pioneering ecologist, survivor of the country's liberation struggles, and his work providing water to rural small farms, that invites its readers "to celebrate the boundless potential for human development".

Histories, biographies, autobiographies, fiction and more. Recommendations from Brand South Africa.

A whodunit in a remote bush camp in northern Botswana: a darker - but equally entertaining - take on Alexander McCall's world ... and there are others in this series too!

Also available for Kindle and Nook.

The debut novel for this Zimbabwe-born writer, "written with kinetic energy that crackles with life" (Jim Hannan, World Literature Today), on many "Best of" lists and shortlists. Shortlisted for the Mann Booker Prize.

While many leading African writers have US publishers, ABC is the nonprofit distributor owned by independent African publishers. ABC books are sold directly from the web site, with profits flowing back to the publishers; they're also sold by Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A portrait of 1970s Botswana is told through the intertwined stories of three people, including a medical student who is forced to flee apartheid South Africa after witnessing a murder and an American Ph.D. student who abandons her studies to follow her husband to Africa.

"A magnificent contribution not just to contemporary African studies but also to the art of great historical writing. Anyone with an interest in either ought to read this book" (Historical Journal). A perennial required reading for Penn's African history courses.

Also available for Kindle and Nook.

A recent Big History from the author of critic-praised "The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (Revised and updated ed., Public Affairs, 2011. http://franklin.library.upenn.edu/record.html?id=FRANKLIN_6271035

Also available for Kindle and Nook.

An excellent collection of nonfiction writing, both primary and secondary. The anthology's selections highlight the politics of the past and the formation of South Africa's "complex, conflicted, cacophonous society".

Also available for Kindle and Nook.

The former editor of Mother Jones magazine reports on his interviews with three "insiders", three "outsiders", and President Zuma, as well as many other people encountered during his travels throughout South Africa between 2004 and 2012.

Also available for Nook.

A firsthand account of the archaeological discoveries of Homo naledi, an all-new species on the human family tree, and Australopithecus sediba in the Cradle of Humankind within the past decade. With this team of "underground astronauts," Berger made the discovery of a lifetime: hundreds of prehistoric bones, including entire skeletons of at least 15 individuals, all perhaps two million years old. Their features combined those of known prehominids like Lucy, the famous Australopithecus, with those more human than anything ever before seen in prehistoric remains.

A Search for Origins is a collection of diverse scholarly essays on the prehistoric sites and the fossil remains, artifacts, and rock art found in South Africa’s “Cradle of Humankind” (COH). COH was declared a World Heritage Site for its wealth of human and animal fossils. Research based on fossils found in the area as well as signs of early human habitation have shed new light on the evolution of humankind and on the significant role that southern Africa played in the development of modern humans. These essays also cover historic activities (including modern-day politics) and how these activities affect the sites.

A coffee table book with informative chapters surveying 80 years of paleoanthropological activity at Sterkfontein and the surrounding region.

This book is an amazing account of Lee Berger's 2008 hunt -- with the help of his curious 9-year-old son -- for a previously unknown species of ape-like creatures that may have been direct ancestors of modern humans. The discovery of two remarkably well preserved, two-million-year-old fossils of an adult female and young male, known as Australopiitecus sediba, has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries in history.