Love, Africa audiobook

I traveled to East Africa in 2013 to visit dear friends and fell in love with it. I was fascinated by the different cultures in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was surprised by the crowded metropolis of Kampala, Uganda. But I particularly loved Nairobi, Kenya and all its contradictions as it embraced both the traditional and modern. I have subscribed to The NY Times for years and have always followed Jeffrey Gettleman's reporting as their East Africa Bureau Chief. I enjoyed read this love story of Africa. I have experienced some similar escapades as #JeffreyGettleman (such as being kidnapped in a developing country) so it was provocative to read of someone else's account of their experience. A well-written book for those who love Africa and have a taste for adventure but also realize the perspective change of parenthood. It inspires me to finish my book about my adventures in Haiti.

Read this after hearing the author interviewed on Pod Save the World. Loved it, although I'm biased, as I'm a foreigner living in Africa too.

Brilliant book! A unique love triangle pitting person against purpose, with brief glimpses into American foreign policy across Africa and the Middle East from the eyes of a journalist. I cannot recommend it enough. Not only did I find the memoir so moving I sent an excessively long email to the author, Jeffrey Gettleman (2012 Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting and Chief of the East Africa Bureau for the New York Times), but he also responded the same day and it was the most pleasant email exchange I've ever had. Love, Africa should be on every adventurer's reading list.

I've traveled a fair amount in Africa over the past 9 years, passing through almost a dozen countries. That made me wonder: would readers who lack that experience love this book as much? How could they appreciate how deftly Gettleman communicates so many of the mystery and subtle ironies and beauty of the continent? But if you can love a place because someone describes it so astutely, so sensitively, then readers who've never been to Africa will love Africa at least a bit, after reading it. And even if reading about a place can never equal visiting it, Gettleman offers so much more. He's written a candid and masterful biography, disclosing things it took a lot of courage to share. I was repeatedly flooded with gratitude.

The pure genius of a recommendation from Audible. I just got back from Rwanda and I still experience "Africa travel fever". And this book has put names on so many moments I experienced. If you do love Africa or want to find out why people fall in love with this wonderful continent, read this book. It is a life story of a punk young guy who turns into an amazing journalist. His life story, approach to life is inspirational and touching. His love for Africa is suicidal, eternal and deep. His narration is emotional yet factual, tactile yet not blackmailing, thorough and long, but never boring. This book is excellent.

Spectacular story, spectacular storytelling. Get deep into Gettleman's head and deep into the places he goes. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

This guy is an excellent writer, and I loved reading about Africa and his journalism career there. He's about a thousand times more adventurous than I was in my own journalistic career. My only quibble is that he tells more information about his love life than I really wanted to hear. He has a right to be proud of himself, but all the personal details made him seem full of himself.

This was my favorite book in 2020. Love, Africa is a memoir written by Jeffery Gettleman, the longtime East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times. It is a story about how he fell in love with the continent as a young man in college, worked his way up the newspaper journalism ladder, and eventually captured the position he'd had his eye on for a decade. This journey is juxtaposed and intertwined with the story of how he met and courted his future wife, how they became a multimedia team for the NYT, and the ups and downs of their relationship as they grew up as people and partners. The moment I picked up this book I knew I had to read it. I've travelled and worked in Africa and found a similar allure to the place and its people as Gettleman describes. I also began my career in newspaper journalism so I am somewhat familiar with that world and the lifestyle required to be successful in it. Therefore I was sucked in to the narrative from the very beginning. However, a non-journalism layperson with no particular interest in Africa would be sucked in to the story too, as the prologue by Gettleman is one of the best introductions to a book I have ever read. If you are not compelled to keep reading to find out what happens then you are simply not to be stimulated by the written word. And what a collection of words it is! Gettlemen is an excellent writer, which is obvious by the station he has achieved in the field. His prose transports. He has an ability with description that only the best writers and crafters of language can create. I found myself underlining various phrases just to remember them for their vividness. To say the book was physically enjoyable to read is an understatement. The content of the story is fulfilling as well. Gettlemen describes his first trip to Africa during a summer in college, where he fell in love with the place, enamored as many people are by, to sum it up clumsily, how different it is from what we know. That trip sowed the seeds for his pursuit of getting back to Africa to work, and it sets him along his path of becoming a journalist. Along the way, as it often happens, he meets a girl. They hit it off; he knows very early on that he has fallen deeply for her, too. However, the path of a cub reporter is a circuitous one, leading to early jobs in places you had never heard of before to get experience. Then you move up to more familiar places, but perhaps even further away. Each promotion up the ladder comes with new challenges for a relationship, trials that can either cement a bond or fracture a commitment. Quite often, both. We witness the evolution of Jeffery and Courtenay's relationship as they grow within themselves and with each other. There are definite growing pains. And there are triumphs. And pains again. Like our own relationships. Jeffery eventually lands that coveted position in Africa and he and Courtenay take up residence in Nairobi, Kenya, and have a beat covering 12 countries. Together they make a team covering war in Sudan, election violence in Kenya, and famine in Somalia. Gettleman's insight on what it means to be a journalist, while somehow remaining a human, is some of the most poignant and revealing content of the book. Anyone interested in this theme will find this book captivating. Anyone else interested in what and how journalists do what they do, or how they deal with what they see, will find it enlightening as well. I'll also point out that Gettleman makes a sincere effort to explain the "savior complex" that often colors Westerners' approaches to working in Africa, and how he has tried to be mindful of it and avoid it as much as possible. In a particularly insightful segment he explains the "3 M's" - the three categories white people usually fall into when they become captivated by Africa. He'll admit when and if he falls into one of them, while letting it teach him how to avoid the pratfalls of this kind of thinking and just to see Africans for the people they are. It's an important process for a good journalist and a better human. Overall the book was fascinating to me. Coming from a similar mindset to Gettleman's helped, but he's done a ton of more adventurous work than I have, which is why he wrote a book about it. There are of course some segments which are hard to read, as any story about reporting in conflict zones will be. The Earth is very often a harsh and violent place. But do yourself a favor and take some time to learn about the world that journalists inhabit, and the training, the personality and the drive they must have to be able to do their jobs. All set against the background of a continent that inspires both wonder and misunderstanding. That's the core pursuit for any journalist in the end: to understand the wider world, and at the same time understanding yourself.

I read this book after listening to to Jeffrey’s interview on Pod Save the World. I really enjoyed this book and felt great camaraderie with his stories as I had spent some time in Africa and ended my time there feeling confused by the beautiful but often shocking experiences. I felt like many of his observations and stories put words to feelings Africa gave me but I could not articulate. If you have spent time in Africa this book will bring you nostalgic feelings that will help you further understand the imprint Africa has left on your life. If you haven’t been to Africa this book will most likely make you want to visit and learn the lessons yourself from the amazing people and places there.

Listened to this on audio while doing longer drives. I found Gettleman's story of how he pursued his dream of working and living in East Africa fascinating. He writes candidly about some of his misadventures while a young man in Kenya / Tanzania and his frustration with the aid industry before settling on journalism. Many of his observations about the sense of community and humanity he found in East Africa resonated with me.

This was brilliant. Jeffrey Gettleman gave us a glimpse into his life - his carefree childhood, his college years when he was finding himself, and his dangerous but fulfilling profession as a foreign correspondent. He gave us the good and the bad, the beautiful and the terrible. I have never thought much about Africa, let alone the various countries that comprise it. This book really opened my eyes to the beauty and spirit of Africa. Definitely a 5 star rating.

Jeffrey Gettleman’s Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival certainly lives up to all elements of its subtitle. There is plenty of romance, both causal and enduring. As an intrepid and fearless foreign correspondent, Gettleman covers brutal conflicts from Afghanistan to Iraq to several

This book was a fascinating memoir of a New York Times foreign correspondent. Mr. Gettleman has had an extraordinary career covering many of the world's hot spots between the Mideast and east Africa. He shows an intellectual curiosity of the people and places he reports on.He evidently had a severe problem with the whole work/live balance thing as a young man, and was driven to cover situations many other people would have run from. His attitude left his personal life in shambles, and his continued cluelessness was frustrating to this reader. I can only imagine its effect on his loved ones.The book is well written and about a very interesting life. Other reviewers have chosen to judge the writer's character as well. While I don't believe that I would like him if I met him in real life, I found it interesting and broadening to read about such a different character. And I think that without characters like him, we wouldn't get news and views of such troubling parts of the world.

I have been reading a lot of history and theory lately to help me understand this challenging moment in time. This booked helped me look at the role journalism can play. Thinking about how the ways journalism can be used as activism. It is certainly not a perfect tool, but when done right it can be one tool in the tool belt to bring about change for the better.Gettleman’s work in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around mostly East Africa helped to shine a light on a lot of atrocities that otherwise would have been unseen by much of the world. Now, the rest of the world did not always respond well. And that is certainly where journalism has its limits. But it was really interesting to learn about how these difficult stories get covered.I was particularly interested in the chapter about the unrest in Kenya after the 2007 election. The dynamics at play there could easily play out in any part of the world when you have an election so blatantly corrupted. Definitely had me thinking a lot about our own election in the US this fall.This book also showed me just how much I have to learn about the many countries and regions that make up Africa. I am already looking at books written by people born in parts of Africa like Kenya (which is a big focus in Gettleman’s book) to get their perspective. If I can’t travel the world to learn more about it during this Covid-19 period I will use books to get me there instead!

Enjoyed listening to Jeff's story. What an amazing adventure. Friendship, love, and marriage, interwove with wars, rebels, and kidnappings. It's like a movie, characters eventually become your friends.