It is a challenging intellectual responsibility to write a `new history for a new nation,' but it is difficult to imagine anyone better qualified to do it than Douglas Johnson. In this brief book Johnson not only covers the entire sweep of the history of southern Sudan from the ancient period to the present day but evokes with precision and ... Read morenuance crucial developments in the history of region and nation and its peoples.
Charles Ambler, professor of history, University of Texas at El Paso Douglas Johnson has managed to pack a vivid, longue duree history of Africa's newest nation into a highly readable book. For anyone gripped by the tumultuous current events of South Sudan, and those speculating about its future, this book is essential reading. Johnson's unrivaled knowledge of South Sudan's history is apparent throughout this concise and readable book. His approach is both sympathetic and critical: South Sudan's current woes are explicable, but not inevitable. It would be easy to see South Sudan's history simply as a bleak story of oppression and misrule; but Johnson shows us that it is also a story of innovation and courage. South Sudan has a deeply problematic historical legacy, and the current situation is dire: yet as this timely book shows, it is not hopeless.
Justin Willis, coeditor, The Sudan Handbook South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation is the best current political history of the world's youngest nation by its most prominent living historian.
Deborah Scroggins, author of Emma's War Douglas Johnson's South Sudan is a bold project by an author deeply knowledgeable about how local histories have now merged into a new and troubled state. The book offers impressive details for how disparate ethnicities have come to take on the obstacles to building a nation, or the failure to do so. Johnson has been a consummate observer of this place and this struggle that has a history and faces extraordinary challenges to make a national future.
James C. McCann, author of Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop With its call for better use of existing sources and a stronger historiographical approach, South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation is a timely addition which speaks directly to South Sudan's mixed experience of nation building and which challenges existing misconceptions about South Sudan and its history....Johnson picks apart the singular paradigm of South Sudan's perennial exploitation by various intruders, offering instead a rich exposition of a diverse region. Show Less