Award Winner! The African Diaspora, by Patrick Manning

Congratulations to Patrick Manning, whose book The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture was recently named the winner of the 2010 Association of Third World Studies Toyin Falola Africa Book Award.

Here’s what the judges of the book had to say about the book:

“The author is adept at tying together what are seemingly separate and unconnected phenomena. Integrating such a complexity (six centuries and several continents) was challenging enough, but it was done with an almost elegant simplicity….”

“Manning challenges three paradigms that have shaped the study of African peoples: (1) their exclusion from studies on modernity, (2) their exclusion from a global integrated study as a group, and (3) their absence of clearly defined thematic structures that encapsulate the experiences of the Africana. Through a new approach to the study of the African Diaspora, Manning shows how African peoples in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Mediterranean contributed to modernity through Diasporas, networks, mixes, hinterlands, and exchanges on the roads between centers….”

For more on the book read the epilogue, The Future of the African Diaspora .