Vance Miguel Johnson’s Reviews > The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts > Status Update

“France’s missteps” referring to neo-colonial political interference is exactly the confirmation i needed to read Hammer’s historical political biases. I can definitely take away that this book has interesting information, but this is a western skewed account.

Dude, Wald is bad. “Her opposition confirmed his impression that US ambassadors in Africa focused too much on soft issues—nutrition, education, and health—and were out of step in a world of globalized terror. ‘There was a resentment that we military types were even hanging out in Africa,’ Wald said, ‘The thinking was, what are you mucking about my area for? You’re just going to mess it up.’”

Abdel Kader Haidara rejecting Mouammar Kadhafi’s proposal to purchase Mali’s manuscripts is very interesting

“French became the primary language taught in Mali’s schools. As a result several generations in Timbuktu and other towns in the region grew up without learning to speak Arabic which doomed the works to irrelevance. The volumes of history, poetry, medicine, and astronomy once proudly displayed in libraries, markets, and homes became rare and then disappeared.“

“However, as the French consolidated their control over the North [of Africa], the days of open commerce and book exchanges ended. Soldiers and visiting scholars made off with manuscripts, and took them home to France where they ended up on display in university and government collections, including the Bibliothèque National in Paris.”