Avisson Press, Inc. of Greensboro, N.C. has just published a new book by Elizabeth Farrar called "African Leaders for Peace and Justice". It looks at seven extraordinary national leaders in African independance and focusses on the early life and especially those crises and transitions around the periods when these leaders were coming into power and political leadership, or periods of profound change.

The introduction is titled "Exceptional Peacemakers in a Violent World".

Hedsole! Sawana! Uhuru! This massive cry for freedom arose from the African continent in the second half of the twentieth century. Such a cry, perhaps, had never been heard before on such a scale in the history of the world. African soldiers, who had risked their lives in the horrendous World War II on behalf of the colonial powers, were crying, "Enough!" For the first time, they had a chance for their voices to be heard. There was no restraining them. With the organization of the United Nations (UN) in 1945-46, the call went out for the freedom of all subject peoples toward self-government.

This book is timely now when so many African nations are struggling to learn how to govern themselves. We are also reminded of books and articles by Steve Coll that detail the massive upheaval of the Middle East as nations there struggled to learn to handle the great wealth of their oil as the twentieth century produced immense new demand for it. The Bricklayer’s Sons: The Family That Spawned 9/11. (Massive shifts in the international landscape seem to produce disorder.)