A well written book that details the issues that have surrounded Africa for the last 50 years. Its scary when the history of a collection of countries can be grouped so easily (post colony, one party democracy, big man democracy, etc...), but its important to know that this is the case. Understandably, rwanda and apartheid are given very large sections in the book (towards the end). I did feel that AIDS was covered only slightly, which was unfortunate. Thats more a pan-African problem i suppose, and therefore not something which should be devoted to a single chapter regarding a single country. Still though, a slightly deeper look would have been nice.

There is alot of information in here. More than i can write about now. I'll simply say that if you knew very little about Africa walking into this book, you'll know untold more walking out. Its a good base of knowledge, and folks interested in how Africa became what it is today (with distrust in governments, massive corruption, leadership cults), then you should read this book.