Sea Salt, Kola & Grains of Paradise: The Untold History of Liberia's Early Ancestors (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780998390550)

Liberian history has been polarized between scholarly works that many people find hard to read and propaganda tracts backed by little evidence. Sea Salt, Kola and Grains of Paradise is different. It distills over 30 years of research on several millennia of history into 150 pages. The book collates evidence from oral histories collected in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea together with Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, French and other written sources collected from research centers in Paris, London and across the U.S. Sea Salt, Kola and Grains of Paradise weaves facts and explanations into gripping stories. The text narrates a history of self-reliance and resilience in language that is accessible yet nuanced. Long overlooked by historians, the area once known as the Windward Coast emerges here as a crossroad of teeming cultural, economic and political currents in West Africa. Liberia's unique finger-snapping handshake is presented along side widely dispersed cultural elements like Mami Wata and Spider the Trickster, Beautifully designed, the book contains 14 original maps and 50 illustrations - most in full color.