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Title: Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa (Updated with a New Afterword) by David Goodman, Paul Weinberg ISBN: 0-520-23203-8 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 15 March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Views from both sides
Comment: Goodman has compiled a great book here with views on important events in South African history. These events are examined with narratives from both sides, white and black. The aftermath of each event is traced as well.
Rating: 3
Summary: Well-written, but not exactly as advertised
Comment: I originally bought this book because it was published about five years after Apartheid's official demise and promised to be about "the New South Africa." There aren't many stories that come out of that country these days and it is difficult finding real information about the transition to full democracy. Regretfully, this book adds little to the quest for answers about South Africa's future.
The author does a good job of interviewing various segments of South African society, but nearly 75% of the book focuses on Apartheid, which has been effectively dead since 1990. This book has the same feel as the many dozens of others that were written prior to Mandela's election. Technically the author is conducting the interviews post-Apartheid, but the reliance is on the old ghosts of the past to excuse tacit failure.
Perhaps most frustrating are the slight clues dropped along the way that hint at corruption and crime, two areas most indicative of national direction (especially in Africa), although the author never indulges us with detail. This is unfortunate because a lot of effort was spent to put together a book that gives precious little insight into whether South Africa will wind up as another Zimbabwe, or if the continent's last great hope will manage to retain its economy and pull up its neighbors as many of us were so hopeful of in 1990.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent introduction to present-day South Africa
Comment: I first heard about this book on a radio talk show and immediately ordered it through Amazon.com. Listening to the author talk about his views on South Africa was quite interesting because he loves the country and its people and is cautiously enthusiastic about its future, but reading his book reveals that the vast problems South Africa faces are incredibly complex and that it may well take several generations to create an egalitarian society. One really wonders if South Africa will stand the test of time and not become another Rwanda or Yugoslavia.
The author intelligently divided the book into four parts: an introduction in which he talks about his early trips in South Africa under apartheid and the current social situation of the country, four portrait sections in which he includes a pair of interviews with people on opposite sides of the current post-apartheid experience, and a sensible personal conclusion. The reader should expect moving as well as harrowing personal accounts of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Many things throughout the book will bring hope to the reader; however, that hope will be checked by Goodman's well-informed statistics on criminality and unemployment in present-day South Africa. The book definitively deserves a wide readership.
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Title: Long Walk to Freedom : The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela Tag: The International Bestseller by Nelson Mandela ISBN: 0316548189 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Country of My Skull : Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa by Antjie Krog ISBN: 0812931297 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 08 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: A History of South Africa, Third Edition by Leonard Monteath Thompson, Leonard L. Thompson ISBN: 0300087764 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Being America : Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World by Jedediah Purdy ISBN: 0375413073 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 11 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould ISBN: 0393314251 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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