African Dominion Audiobook By Michael Gomez cover art

African Dominion

A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa

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African Dominion

By: Michael Gomez
Narrated by: David Sadzin
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A groundbreaking book that puts early and medieval West Africa on the map of global history.

Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces how Islam's growth in West Africa, along with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A radically new account of the importance of early Africa in global history, African Dominion will be the standard work on the subject for years to come.

©2018 Princeton University Press (P)2020 Tantor Africa Civilization Ideologies & Doctrines Politics & Government World Middle Ages Ancient History Middle East Medieval History Medieval Africa
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Fantastic book and marvelous history but the narrative made it so difficult to listen to. He is monotone and reads as if it’s one run on sentence.

Fantastic content, but poor performance

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This is the most detailed book I’ve read on any African Empire. It is incredibly informative.

Unfortunately, the narrator is not so good which I believe is due to the dry writing style of the author.

If you’re seeking detailed knowledge on West African history, this book is for you

This book would be 5 stars if not for the weaknesses I stated above.

A Great, detailed history with poor narration.

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I am an avid listener of audio books and this is one of the more well written, detailed and unique books I've come across. The topic is not often covered and Mr. Gomez does an excellent job of making a complex topic comprehensible to someone with little context.

excellent

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Halting delivery and misunderstanding of Arabic pronunciation make it hard to listen to this otherwise interesting book.

Interesting book, weak narrator

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Exhaustive history of the Mali Empire and it successors. Reads like a text book. Heavily ‘Great Man’ history.

The details

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I liked the two times used to be better understood by most all people worldwide

The thorough all bases covered information

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Irritatingly wordy and stilted in its prose. Complex ideas require complex phrasing, but the author’s insistence on using complex phrasing and “big words” to express even the simplest ideas became so grating that I found myself irritated at even minor choices like using “nomenclature” when “name” or “title” would have been just as clear.

Put down the thesaurus

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Alot of great information, but very hard on the ears. The author doesn’t flow and his unfamiliarity with Arabic terms makes it difficult to follow.

Not easy to follow

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The author tries so hard to sound smart, mostly by using multisyllabic words, that it comes across as the opposite. This is amplified by the fact that many of these are used incorrectly. There is good information in here, but it is so hidden in horribly written text that it’s not worth getting to. Utterly dissatisfactory, as this author would put it.

Pitiful attempt at scholarship

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