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The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Published:
Little, Brown and Company 2015
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
A vivid, powerful, and controversial look at how the world gets Africa wrong, and how a resurgent Africa is forcing it to think again.
Africa has long been misunderstood — and abused — by outsiders. Correspondent Alex Perry traveled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis. Beginning with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime-in 2011, when the US and the major aid agencies helped cause a famine in which 250,000 Somalis died-he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. To finally win their freedom, Africans must confront three last false prophets-Islamists, dictators and aid workers-who would keep them in their bonds.
Beautifully written, intimately reported, and sure to spark debate, The Rift passionately argues that a changing Africa revolutionizes our ideas of it, and of ourselves.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
11/17/2015
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780316333795, 9780316300988
ASIN:
B00U6DNYFY
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Alex Perry. (2015). The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. Little, Brown and Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Alex Perry. 2015. The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. Little, Brown and Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Alex Perry, The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Alex Perry. The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Needs Update?:
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 15:09:25
Date Updated:
Dec 06, 2020 02:40:17
Last Metadata Check:
Apr 14, 2024 03:15:06
Last Metadata Change:
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Last Availability Change:
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OverDrive Product Record

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        Alex Perry was born in the US and educated at Oxford University, He has worked as a foreign correspondent for two decades, covering Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. During that time, he wrote more than 30 cover stories for TIME and Newsweek and covered more than 35 wars. His numerous awards include honors from the Foreign Press Association in London and the Overseas Press Club in New York.

      • name: Alex Perry
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title
The Rift
fullDescription
A vivid, powerful, and controversial look at how the world gets Africa wrong, and how a resurgent Africa is forcing it to think again.
Africa has long been misunderstood — and abused — by outsiders. Correspondent Alex Perry traveled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis. Beginning with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime-in 2011, when the US and the major aid agencies helped cause a famine in which 250,000 Somalis died-he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. To finally win their freedom, Africans must confront three last false prophets-Islamists, dictators and aid workers-who would keep them in their bonds.
Beautifully written, intimately reported, and sure to spark debate, The Rift passionately argues that a changing Africa revolutionizes our ideas of it, and of ourselves.
reviews
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      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from September 14, 2015
        In this stunning book about the past, present, and future of Africa, foreign correspondent Perry (who’s written for Time and Newsweek) achieves the seemingly impossible: he writes about the continent from a Western perspective without trying to define Africa to the West, inviting Africans to speak directly to his readers. Perry starts his continental journey in Somalia during the catastrophic 2011 famine; moves on to the world’s newest and most volatile nation, South Sudan; and then works
        his way through 14 more sub-Saharan African nations. He places
        current crises into historical context, buttressed by on-the-ground reporting. Perry examines widely discussed issues affecting Africa (including famine, AIDS, humanitarian aid, terrorism, corruption, and Chinese influence), always mindful of the bearing each has on Africa’s future. Along the way, Perry bumps into George Clooney in South Sudan, watches Robert Mugabe speak to a crowd in Zimbabwe, and confronts Jacob Zuma in South Africa. The stories he tells, of average Africans trying to carve out a better life, have the vividness of fiction. Perry also exposes the flaws of large-scale humanitarianism in Africa, addressing the inflated claims made for its success and its often counterproductive strategies. Candid, smart, and self-aware, this work is an impressive accomplishment that does more to give Western readers context for Africa’s current condition than any book in recent memory.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        October 1, 2015
        Exploring modern Africa in all of its complexities. Perry (Lifeblood: How to Change the World One Dead Mosquito at a Time, 2011, etc.) is a veteran foreign correspondent, with Africa representing his most recent beat. This book builds on his reportage by exploring contemporary African problems and promise. One of his major themes is the ways in which those who claim to want to help Africa]foreign aid workers, nongovernmental organizations, Western governments and their militaries]often do more harm than good, emphasizing their own priorities over those of the people they purport to serve. Perry has an eye for the telling anecdote, and he generally makes his case well, though he is better at identifying problems than proposing solutions. The book is uneven; some chapters are deeply reported and compellingly presented, while others feel scattered, perfunctory, and incomplete. Furthermore, Perry overstates his book's uniqueness, effectively trying to dismiss a number of scholars and journalists, many of whom have written about Africa with at least as much insight and verve as Perry, without the self-regard. The author dismisses veteran "Africa hands" for allegedly mostly speaking with one another, and yet he relies on their insights when it is convenient for him. He also overstates the comprehensiveness of his coverage of sub-Saharan Africa and has a tendency to put himself at the center of the story, an unwitting irony for an author who disparages the solipsism of others. However, behind these flaws are important stories that Perry effectively conveys when he gets out of his own way. His arguments about the often deleterious effects of outsiders augment some of the scholarly literature by providing a human face to usually well-intentioned but misguided interlopers. A welcome addition to our understanding of Africa that occasionally overpromises and underdelivers.

        COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        November 15, 2015

        Journalist Perry (Time, Newsweek) draws on 20 years of experience covering conflicts in Africa and the Middle East to report hundreds of interviews with locals and foreign workers in more than a dozen countries in sub-Saharan Africa including Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, and South Africa, exposing the ways in which Western governments, aid agencies, and humanitarian activists have failed to understand Africa and have inadvertently added to the continent's misery. Citing examples and trends demonstrating that Africa's improved future is being built by Africans, Perry traces the birth of the African aid industry to Biafra of the 1960s and follows the failures of foreign aid to provide Africans even with effective emergency relief through ongoing disasters in a number of countries. His chapter on China's current role in African development credits the Chinese with a better approach to helping Africans develop infrastructure (while reaping benefits for China) but acknowledges Africans' capacity to look out for their own interests. The author's citation of the African-initiated greening of near-desert acreage in Niger seems the best indication that he may be correct in seeing Africa breaking free. VERDICT This in-depth, investigative report will intrigue readers concerned with U.S. policy and its impact on African nations.--Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA

        Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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A vivid, powerful, and controversial look at how the world gets Africa wrong, and how a resurgent Africa is forcing it to think again.
Africa has long been misunderstood — and abused — by outsiders. Correspondent Alex Perry traveled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis. Beginning with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime-in 2011, when the US and the major aid agencies helped cause a famine in which 250,000 Somalis died-he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. To finally win their freedom, Africans must confront three last false prophets-Islamists, dictators and aid workers-who would keep them in their bonds.
Beautifully written, intimately reported, and sure to spark debate, The Rift passionately argues that a changing Africa revolutionizes our ideas of it, and of ourselves.
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