Southern African LBJs made simple


Book Description

Now updated and expanded, Southern African LBJs made simple offers a unique method for identifying and distinguishing the cryptic little birds that are known as ‘little brown jobs’. Using a three-stage process, the book guides readers through successive stages, each of which takes them closer to identifying the bird in question. As calls play a critical role in identification of these birds, individual calls and comparative tracks are included. The book features: NEW BIRD CALL ACCESS – instant access to calls using free downloadable call app to scan barcodes on the species pages. Concise text describing key ID criteria (such as size, habitat, habits, call and similar-looking and -sounding birds). Updated distribution maps and carefully labelled illustrations. This enhanced and updated new edition will be an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to be able to tell one LBJ from another. Sales points: invaluable resource for identifying cryptic birds; fully updated, with additional species and refined ID information; scan and play bird calls using free downloadable app.




Forthcoming Books


Book Description




Kids’ Birds of of Southern Africa


Book Description

This lively, jam-packed book introduces kids to more than 60 bird groups found in southern Africa: long-legged flamingos, speedy falcons, jewel-like sunbirds, plucky hornbills and many more. Learn to identify different birds, and discover their intriguing behaviours – how they find food, choose a mate, build a nest, raise their young and avoid predators. A detailed introduction explains birding concepts such as courtship, migration, mobbing and moulting. More than 500 stunning photographs are included, with many annotated to highlight interesting features and traits. Sales points: Second title in the series launched with Kids’ Snakes of Southern Africa. Covers over 60 of southern Africa’s most common and interesting bird groups. Packed with interesting facts and did-you-knows. Lively, colourful design with superb photographs.




The Laziness Myth


Book Description

When people cannot find good work, can they still find good lives? By investigating this question in the context of South Africa, where only 43 percent of adults are employed, Christine Jeske invites readers to examine their own assumptions about how work and the good life do or do not coincide. The Laziness Myth challenges the widespread premise that hard work determines success by tracing the titular "laziness myth," a persistent narrative that disguises the systems and structures that produce inequalities while blaming unemployment and other social ills on the so-called laziness of particular class, racial, and ethnic groups. Jeske offers evidence of the laziness myth's harsh consequences, as well as insights into how to challenge it with other South African narratives of a good life. In contexts as diverse as rapping in a library, manufacturing leather shoes, weed-whacking neighbors' yards, negotiating marriage plans, and sharing water taps, the people described in this book will stimulate discussion on creative possibilities for seeking the good life in and out of employment, in South Africa and elsewhere.




Journey to a Waterfall A Biologist in Africa


Book Description

From the age of ten, the author was determined to be involved with African wildlife. This memoir recounts how he was able to fulfil this dream, travelling through Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Egypt, as well as the Yemen, which biologically is almost Africa. He tells of being captured by Eritrean guerillas, seeing Gelada baboons in the Ethiopian highlands and the huge migrations of zebra and wildebeest in the Serengeti, doing research on termites in Darfur as well as assessing agricultural problems in the highest fastnesses of the Yemeni mountains, gazing in awe at the Pyramids of Giza and marvelling at the Victoria Falls in full flo







Previous Convictions


Book Description

Critic, essayist and cultural savant A.A. Gill is probably the most widely read columnist in Britain. His books The Angry Island and A.A. Gill is away have found delighted fans in America as well, and sparked a loyal following. His new book of travel essays, Previous Convictions, ranges from Gill's nearby domestic locales of Glastonbury and the English countryside to Haiti, Guatemala, Pakistan and exotic, dangerous, downtown Manhattan. In this collection of notes from the corners of the globe, and sometimes from the edge of sanity, he confesses about his travels far and wide, "The more I see of the world, the less I think I understand. Familiarity breeds even more astonishment. The world just gets wider and deeper and weirder." These pieces are wickedly funny, sometimes pointedly -- even purposely -- critical of many cultures and traditions, and always edifying and enchanting. As an adventurer and as a writer, Gill never disappoints; while he may take others to task for their customs, habits, idiosyncrasies and plain bad taste, his own indefatigable curiosity keeps him going back again and again for more, and provides us with spectacular entertainment along the way.







African Wild Life


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South Africa


Book Description