“Phil Curtin is one of the most important historians to stride across the fields of academe in the twentieth century. His memoir tracks the emergence of American interest in and engagement with the wider world. It is both a self-assessment of his intellectual life and a valuable chapter in the history of higher education.”
James L. A. Webb, Jr., author of Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800-1900
“It is one of the most successful memoirs to present the social background of a historian…It is now possible to see how family and social upbringing shape not only the trajectories of historians but the subjects they choose to write about.”
African History
“It is difficult to think of any historian writing and teaching over the past half century whose work has been as influential in such a diverse array of subfields with history and related social science disciplines…. ”
International Journal of African Historical Studies
In the 1950s, professional historians claiming to specialize in tropical Africa were no more than a handful. The teaching of world history was confined to high school courses, and even those were focused on European history, with a chapter added to account for the history of East and South Asia. The change over the ensuing decades was revolutionary.
Philip D. Curtin was a leader among a new generation of historians that emerged after the Second World War. Written with characteristic economy and telling detail, On the Fringes of History: A Memoir follows Curtin from his beginnings in central West Virginia in the 1920s, through a distinguished academic career in which Curtin founded African studies at the University of Wisconsin. He began the programs in comparative world history at Wisconsin and Johns Hopkins, producing many of the most influential historians and Africanists from the 1950s to today.
Always an independent thinker and controversial figure, Curtin revived the study of the Atlantic slave trade. His career stands as an example of the kind of dissatisfaction and struggles that brought about a sea change in higher education. On the Fringes of History traces the movement of African history and world history from the fringes of the history profession into the mainstream. This stunningly illustrated memoir illuminates both the career of a leading historian and the history of twentieth-century academia.
Philip D. Curtin was Herbert Baxter Adams Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins University. His books include The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census and Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. More info →
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978-0-8214-1645-7
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Release date: October 2005
216 pages
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978-0-8214-4203-6
Release date: October 2005
216 pages
Rights: World
Modern Muslims
A Sudan Memoir
By Steve Howard
Steve Howard departed for the Sudan in the early 1980s as an American graduate student beginning a three-year journey in which he would join and live with the Republican Brotherhood, the Sufi Muslim group led by the visionary Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. Taha was a religious intellectual who participated in the early days of Sudan’s anticolonial struggle, but quickly turned his movement into a religious reform effort based on his radical reading of the Qur’an. He was executed in 1985 for apostasy.Deca
Memoir · African History · Sufism · History | Modern | 20th Century · Islam · African Studies · Sudan · Trade Nonfiction
The Boy Is Gone
Conversations with a Mau Mau General
By Laura Lee P. Huttenbach
A story with the power to change how people view the last years of colonialism in East Africa, The Boy Is Gone portrays the struggle for Kenyan independence in the words of a freedom fighter whose life spanned the twentieth century’s most dramatic transformations. Born into an impoverished farm family in the Meru Highlands, Japhlet Thambu grew up wearing goatskins and lived to stand before his community dressed for business in a pressed suit, crisp tie, and freshly polished shoes.
Biography & Autobiography | General · Colonialism and Decolonization · African History · African Studies · Mau Mau · Kenya
Paying Calls in Shangri-La
Scenes from a Woman’s Life in American Diplomacy
By Judith M. Heimann
Judith M. Heimann entered the diplomatic life in 1958 to join her husband, John, in Jakarta, Indonesia, at his American Embassy post. This, her first time out of the United States, would set her on a path across the continents as she mastered the fine points of diplomatic culture. She did so first as a spouse, then as a diplomat herself, thus becoming part of one of the Foreign Service’s first tandem couples.Heimann’s
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