Volume 1 begins with the African past, focusing on the ancient kingdoms of both East and West Africa and continues through the coming of the Europeans and the African colonial experience, concluding with the rise of nationalism in which Africans struggle to regain their freedom from the Europeans.

Through Japanese Eyes shows us Japanese history and society through the eyes of a wide variety of Japanese (and a few non-Japanese) observers -- male and female, young and old, novelists, poets, and journalists. With an emphasis on young people and their educations, this volume interweaves the historical and the contemporary, the laudatory and the critical, the domestic and the foreign. It demolishes all stereotypes of Japan and leaves students with a new appreciation of Japanese diversity. And it challenges students to ask the same questions of their own society that these Japanese are...