A one volume survey of an entire content’s history from the pre-history to the book’s publication covering the rise and fall of multiple states and empires, ethnicities, and cultures up to the last decade of the twentieth century is an ambitious project, and Davidson succeeds wonderfully in this summary overview. Starting with the scholarship of the previous three to four decades, he debunks the racist myth of Africa as a content of ignorant savages that needed to be saved from themselves by “civilized” intervention from the north. He also convincingly challenges the idea that the civilizations on the Mediterranean coast were significantly different from those of Sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the desertification of the Sahara was the cause of civilization from the south to push north towards the delta of the Nile in Egypt.

Necessarily brief histories of the kingdoms and empires of Kush, Axum, the Berbers, are followed by the growth of trade along the western and eastern shore of the continent, the rise and decline of Nubia, Ghana, Kanem-Bornu, Mali, Songhay, and the impact of Christianity in Ethiopia and Nubia, and the larger impact of Islam on the rest of the continent. The development of what Davidson terms Mature Iron Age culture and the increase in trade across the Sahara and transoceanic trade on the eastern and western shores of the continent with Arabia, India, China, and finally Europe sparked trading stations that grew into immigrant settlements that gradually became a prelude to imperial conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, and then by European empires in the 19th. This and the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade were huge destabilizing impacts on native African society and civilization. From them followed depopulation and loss of land. Which resulted in whole populations fleeing from the encroachment and involuntary servitude imposed by the new white settlers. This, in turn, brought them into conflict with the people of the interior and with each other. Desperate people, deposed of land, freedom, and the historical basis of their culture combined with racism became the myth of ignorant savages that needed to be saved from themselves.

The struggle against colonialism, and its consequences from the late 19th century to its fall in the second half of the 20th century make up the balance of the book. The impact of two world wars, with Africans pressed into service by their colonial masters helped accelerate its demise but did little to heal the injuries that it inflicted on the continent’s population. ( )

Superb! 1)Readable; careful 2) Always precise when possible 3) Never stops the effort to be fair, even-handed and present both and/or may sides of a case! S E Lanier 1998 ( )