For more than a thousand years, from A.D. 500 to 1700, the medieval kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay grew rich on the gold, salt, and slave trade that stretched across Africa. Scraping away hundreds of years of ignorance, prejudice, and mythology, award-winnnig authors Patricia and Fredrick McKissack reveal the glory of these forgotten empires while inviting us to share in the inspiring process of historical recovery that is taking place today.

Patricia and Fredrick McKissack were writers of children's fiction and nonfiction with a particular interest in the African American experience. Patricia received a Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as three individual Coretta Scott King Awards for books co-written with Frederick: A Long Hard Journey: The Story of the Pullman Porter, The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural, and Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters.