I went into this book thinking I would be learning about all of the ancient black races of antiquity but instead got this opinionated piece by a self absorbed author who couldn’t help but remind the reader of his credentials every couple of pages. I found this book unbearable to read and it was unfortunate because a lot of the information he was providing seemed interesting but it was mere conjecture. He never provided sources to any of his claims, I just can't get behind that. After reading this torturous book, I opted in giving it away to a friend who seemed fairly interested in it but to no surprise he subsequently returned it.

I think this book is very informative and if you don't know where you came from you won't know where you're going. If this book is not based on your people I don't think a fair assessment can be made.

This is by far one of the best ever written on African American History! I think every black person living in America should read this book!

A friend of mine recommended this book to me a few years ago. However, I did not take this recommendation seriously. I was afraid of being indoctrinated, since I was sceptical of this notion that black people were the original Hebrews. A notion which my friend preached on the daily on Facebook.

The more I read, about Egypt and ancient black history, the more this notion began to make sense. My curiosity for this book was awoken by two incidents. The first incident happened when I watched a film based on a true story, about the Israeli government sending Mosad to rescue Ethiopian Jews better known as the ¨Beta Jews¨. My mind was like, so it must be true what my friend has been saying all along. Then on the second incident, I read in passing about the Lemba people and their Jewish/Hebrew heritage, they reside presently in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. Thus, I decided to learn more about the these Hebrews.

This book is an academic text made for popular reading, with enough sources for further research for the keen student of history. The book traces the history of the black Hebrews from Abraham in Babylon, to Hebrews in Egypt and Ethiopia and glimpses of Hebrews in Madagascar, Ghana, Algeria and Sudan. The book is concise and highly informative.

A great read and must have for the African scholar who is interested in both history and religion.

I started this book on my personal journey to learn about my own African ancestry. I discovered Rudolph R. Windor on a reading list of book that all African Americans should read. Windor used the bible coupled with historical research to place African people in various biblical cities and events. He breaks down the book of Genesis as representation of various peoples around the world. Then Windsor begins to tell the history of various Kingdoms through out the continent of Africa. How the African people were affected by the Hebrew faith and then invaded by the people of the Islamic faith. The rise of Timbuktu, education centers such as the Kemet and Cush, and how Slavery effected every kingdom. Windsor also speaks about how African kingdoms were educated in Medicine, Science, Economics, Trading, Politics and how this knowledge was spread throughout the world through invasions by the Greeks and Romans and later with Moors invading Spain and Portugal. If anything, this book has encouraged me to continue my studies and to further my knowledge. Windsor gave a brief synopsis of each kingdom but I will have to continue reading. It is an important fact to also mention that this book was written in 1969 and since then many more discoveries have been made by various people on the African ancient past.

An enlightened rastafarian gave me this book for helping him wire up his sound system. The first 3 chapters completely negated and challenged what I was taught in grade school. I should come full circle and give this a proper reading.

If you are one who is interested in cultural issues, historic issues, or have a deep sense of intuition this book is for you! Babylon to Timbuktu contains a vast wealth of historic knowledge that is very valuable particularly to persons of color. However, this also makes for a no-so easy read, as much of the information is confusing unless you have prior knowledge or studies in history. For the novice reader, this book will take time to reader with a thorough overview and research of the material provided. IT IS NOT A PAGE TURNER. While I found the book very useful, I also found it kind of difficult to read and keep up with the thoughts/info the writer provided. This difficulty may be a turn off for some, but if you have the interest and patience to read you will enjoy this book.

Because this book was not an easy read, and the thoughts of the writer did not always flow- I gave this book 3 starts. In terms of quality though, this book is a five star read!

Wow. What a ride.
Let's talk first about the content of the book: I was intrigued. One of the things we talk about in my World History class is the African Jews, particularly in Ethiopia. They claim descent from the Queen of Sheba and the Biblical King Solomon. This book combines a lot of my interest and covers a lot of my previous knowledge. However, it isn't a book that has a lot of support. Instead, the author made claims and states them as if they are undisputed facts, claims like "most of the people of Africa were Jews, but they actually just pretended not to be." As a book, it is disjointed (the first few chapters cover sweeping swaths of history, then he seems to start over in Biblical history again) and most of his "support" is from taken-out-of-context Bible verses and prophecies.

It is not that I was not open or eager to hear his claims. In fact, I think many of them could be true. But he does not support his claims here, and the book reads much like a conspiracy theory blog post. If he was my student, I would say "you need more concrete evidence!"

Now as for the audiobook - I put a comment on this that it was one of the most entertaining audiobooks I've ever read because of how terrible it was. The reader corrects himself three times, slapping himself every single time. In one of these instances he starts over trying to read the sentence a few times, and ends up saying "ugh, I can't f*ing talk." In an audiobook! His pronunciation isn't just wrong, it varies wildly. Nebuchadnezzar, for example, is called "ne-BUCK-ned-ZAHR", then "ne-BUtchred-zahr." The Roman emperor Trajan is referred to as "Tray-han." The Biblical book of Esther is called "EES-ther." Honestly if I wasn't a former Bible teacher and a current World History teacher who teaches on all this content, I would have no idea who he was talking about. I honestly had to rely on context clues from the narrative to figure out who the people were. There were plenty of difficult words he said correctly, but almost just as many that he butchered. The oddest part was that he was a good narrator other than that, in terms of ease of listening. Just a terrible pronouncer.

So would I recommend this? No. Do I wish I could read another book on the same topic? Yes.

This begins as the sloppiest, most haphazard book I've ever lain eyes on. Seriously, it's all over the place. The author seems like he's on ten different drugs as there is no clear line of reasoning, nor any apparent organization at all. Some lines even appear like blatant non-sequiturs conjured up for God knows what. For example, one passage reads:

"As stated above, the Africans came to Alexander claiming that the land of Canaan belonged to them. The point that I want to elucidate is that these Canaanites considered themselves Africans. Consequently, we can correctly say that he Hebrew-Canaanite language is one of the African languages.
Many of the private houses of these black people were equipped with cisterns for storing water.
The wealth of Phoenicia was predicated on clandestine, technical procedures in manufacture..."

Yeah...we got your point...& why did you arbitrarily bring up that factoid about cisterns?...

It's also obvious the author has a lack of confidence in what he's talking about as he has to explicitly explain & repeat everything he says two times over like his readership is too dumb to draw further implications between the lines. Especially irritating is how often the author hammers it over your head that everybody is black! The Egyptians, the Arabs, the early Southern Europeans, the Asians, even Hannibal(Whether this were true or not, it need not be hammered over my head, dear sir, particularly if you want me to believe you).

None of this is to mention that much of which he speaks of is plain conjecture though he, again explicitly, states that it's been proven. The whole effort combines into what feels like a cheap rhetorical brochure written by an amateur who aspires towards sounding academic in their approach but is clearly out of their depth. His deductive reasoning is full of holes & his logic is laughably contrived. To top it all off I still only have a vague idea of what he was ultimately trying to achieve here. This is no history of anything but a splatter of random thoughts loosely tied to the theme of Africanism...

That is unless you can manage to get to the history of the Arabs & the beginnings of Islam, in which case it begins to demonstrate sudden cohesion of a sorts.

It's rather fascinating actually because after that point onwards it becomes a coherent, easy read with a structured, chronological take on the history of, well, the ancient black races. So, I recommend any future readers skip the first segment although don't expect anything more than a cursory glance over the history of Black Hebrews & the societies of the African continent.

Excellent read. Very informative.

good

I found this book to be a great primer into history that is seldom talked about. While I do believe that this book only scratches the surface of the history of Africa and her people, that may have been the intention of the author all along. By giving a wide array of topics from the Moors in spain to the origins of the original people, Windsor gives the reader an opportunity to dig further into the vast wealth of knowledge that the continent has had to offer with his own sources. I would say, however, that other writers such as Chancellor Williams, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan and Ivan Van Sertima have much more detailed works. This is not to detract from Windsor’s work though. I would say the book is a welcome addition to anyone’s bookshelf.