My library button
  • Book cover of Black Crescent

    Beginning with Latin America in the fifteenth century, this book, first published in 2005, is a social history of the experiences of African Muslims and their descendants throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean. The record under slavery is examined, as is the post-slavery period into the twentieth century. The experiences vary, arguably due to some extent to the Old World context. Muslim revolts in Brazil are also discussed, especially in 1835, by way of a nuanced analysis. The second part of the book looks at the emergence of Islam among the African-descended in the United States in the twentieth century, with successive chapters on Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X, with a view to explaining how orthodoxy arose from varied unorthodox roots.

  • Book cover of African Dominion

    A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global context 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, the first on this period of the region’s history in a generation, tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally. Scholars have long held that such distinctions arose during the colonial period, but Gomez shows they developed much earlier. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces the exchange of ideas and influences with North Africa and the Central Islamic Lands by way of merchants, scholars, and pilgrims. Islam’s growth in West Africa, in tandem with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A major preoccupation was the question of who could be legally enslaved, which together with other factors led to the construction of new ideas about ethnicity, race, gender, and caste—long before colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Telling a radically new story about early Africa in global history, African Dominion is set to be the standard work on the subject for many years to come.

  • Book cover of Reversing Sail

    This book examines the global unfolding of the African Diaspora, the migrations and dispersals of people of African, from antiquity to the modern period. Their exploits, challenges, and struggles are discussed over a wide expanse of time in ways that link as well as differentiate past and present circumstances. The experiences of Africans in the Old World, in the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, is followed by their movement into the New, where their plight in lands claimed by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English colonial powers is analyzed from enslavement through the Cold War. While appropriate mention is made of persons of renown, particular attention is paid to the everyday lives of working class people and their cultural efflorescence. The book also attempts to explain contemporary plights and struggles through the lens of history.

  • Book cover of Kingdoms Within

    What began as a simple quest to find her great-grandmother's birth certificate led author Elena A. Gomez to discover information beyond her dreams. In Kingdoms Within, she shares the story of growing up as a twin in Chicago, her experiences visiting relatives in northern Mexico and Texas as a child, and the search for her great-grandmother's birth certificate. This memoir chronicles the events of Elena's life as a child to adulthood, with special attention given to her family history and background. The tale begins with her search for her great-grandmother's birth certificate, carrying on a mission begun by her grandfather. That quest, requiring both persistence and faith, takes Elena to extraordinary places during her life. Filled with detailed recollections and vivid depictions of her memories, Kingdoms Within delves into Elena's heritage as a Mexican-American and tells about what she learns about her roots.

  • Book cover of Witches of Cañon Charro

    Our parents believed that if the children were told stories of monsters, the children could be controlled through fear. I can remember all the stories told to me as a child growing up in the Southwestern desert of Arizona. We feared witches and monsters and the darkness of the night, in which they thrive. Our inner searches lead us to three living witches who reside in the lonely and quiet desert of Central Arizona, cascaded in the beauty of the mountains and all the life that lives within. The three witches are intent on being left alone to survive in a world ignorant in the ways of freedom and choice and who fall victim to persecution and prejudice. As the three witches, May, Ursula, and Dru, attempt to protect their property and life from the greedy leaders of Plata Chiflon, we come to realize that our innermost identities reach into places that are profoundly more real than superstitions or religion. It is then that the real monsters come out to play. Witches of Cañon Charro is about small-town politics and the people who help to fight bias, prejudice, and social injustice. It is about keeping the balance of social interaction within the community.

  • Book cover of Reflective Poems

    When I am in a hospital or hurting in silence, I want Chaplain Luis Gomez to comfort me and lead me deeper into truth and trusting in the Living God. His poems are written out of his own experiences. (Like David the Psalmist). He encourages us to grasp the hand of the Savior. Luis has helped thousands of people, people in destitute, people enslaved, people of various disabilities, people abandoned, people dying and people who feels hopeless. Luiss poems are real, his works bring us to light and life in our Lord. Dr. J. Scott Horrell Professor of Theological Studies Dallas Theological Seminary For those days when we need comfort through awe inspiring poems and reflections that covers every facet of human emotions, his eloquent and sensitivity in his style of writing are to be cherished by every household. He truly has a beautiful gift in writing poems. By Ms. Lynell Brignac, RN, ASN and Co-Author of Nursing Jambalaya with Gumbo on the Side

  • Book cover of Exchanging Our Country Marks

    The transatlantic slave trade brought individuals from diverse African regions and cultures to a common destiny in the American South. In this comprehensive study, Michael Gomez establishes tangible links between the African American community and its Afr

  • Book cover of Statistical Procedures for Agricultural Research

    Here in one easy-to-understand volume are the statistical procedures and techniques the agricultural researcher needs to know in order to design, implement, analyze, and interpret the results of most experiments with crops. Designed specifically for the non-statistician, this valuable guide focuses on the practical problems of the field researcher. Throughout, it emphasizes the use of statistics as a tool of research—one that will help pinpoint research problems and select remedial measures. Whenever possible, mathematical formulations and statistical jargon are avoided. Originally published by the International Rice Research Institute, this widely respected guide has been totally updated and much expanded in this Second Edition. It now features new chapters on the analysis of multi-observation data and experiments conducted over time and space. Also included is a chapter on experiments in farmers' fields, a subject of major concern in developing countries where agricultural research is commonly conducted outside experiment stations. Statistical Procedures for Agricultural Research, Second Edition will prove equally useful to students and professional researchers in all agricultural and biological disciplines. A wealth of examples of actual experiments help readers to choose the statistical method best suited for their needs, and enable even the most complicated procedures to be easily understood and directly applied. An International Rice Research Institute Book

  • Book cover of Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad

    Bundu was an anomaly among the precolonial Muslim states of West Africa. Founded during the jihads which swept the savannah in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it developed a pragmatic policy, unique in the midst of fundamentalist, theocratic Muslim states. Located in the Upper Senegal and with access to the Upper Gambia, Bundu played a critical role in regional commerce and production and reacted quickly to the stimulus of European trade. Drawing upon a wide range of sources both oral and documentary, Arabic, English and French, Dr Gomez provides the first full account of Bundu's history. He analyses the foundation and growth of an Islamic state at a crossroads between the Saharan and trans-Atlantic trade, paying particular attention to the relationship between Islamic thought and court policy, and to the state's response to militant Islam in the early nineteenth century.

  • Book cover of Regulation for Revenue

    A Brookings Institution Press and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy publication Over the past two decades Americans have become increasingly skeptical about the benefits of community growth and hostile to new taxes--while continuing to demand improvements in local services. One response to this tension has been a burgeoning movement to raise public revenue by regulating growth. In this timely book, the authors explain that most growing localities now require private developers to finance public improvements as a condition for receiving permits to build. These permit conditions, known as "exactions," are most commonly used to ensure that infrastructure capacity will be adequate to serve the occupants of new real estate developments and to lessen the harmful effects of these developments on other local citizens. Exactions are often used to finance new roads, water and waste disposal facilities, and public open space, but some communities have begun to require developer financing for such services as day care, job training, low-cost housing, and ride sharing. The authors see the dramatic growth of exaction financing as an epochal shift in the character of American land use regulation. A function once isolated from the local government mainstream is now close to heart of fiscal and public works decisionmaking. Politicians find exactions an extremely valuable tactic for resolving land use conflict. Lawyers and developers worry about how to establish appropriate limits on the use of exaction, economists debate their equity and efficiency, and planners consider their effect on urban reform. Regulation for Revenue offers an integrated appraisal of exaction financing, showing that exactions come in many forms and that they can be meaningfully evaluated only by comparison with realistic alternatives. These include growth restrictions, tolerance of infrastructure overload, and increased tax and user charges.