San Antonio College Library

"In this utterly depressing account of the west African nation's history and politics, scholar and diplomat Pham offers a cautionary tale regarding Western intervention in Africa. Colonized by free American blacks in the early 19th century, Liberia has long been beset by tensions, not only among its native populations but between natives and the descendants of its Western colonizers. But Pham is no knee-jerk blame-the-West critic- far from it. As...

In nineteenth-century America, the belief that blacks and whites could not live in social harmony and political equality in the same country led to a movement to relocate African Americans to Liberia, a West African colony established by the United States government and the American Colonization Society in 1822. In The Price of Liberty, Claude Clegg accounts for 2,030 North Carolina blacks who left the state and took up residence in Liberia between...

Firestone and the Warlord reveals how the American tire company Firestone conducted business during the brutal Liberian civil war, piecing together how the stories of Charles Taylor (the American-educated war criminal notorious for his use of child soldiers) and Firestone (Liberia's largest single employer) intersected in fateful ways between 1989 and 1992. The investigation uncovers the details of the deal Firestone struck with the warlord-how it...

When ten-year-old Birahima's mother dies, he leaves his native village in the Ivory Coast, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search hor his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope, and a tiny wage. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment,...