History of Africa

Rating:
Summary: Excellent survey for the first-time reader
Review: Extremely well written and hard to put down.

Shillington has an obvious affection for Africa, but I expected it and allowed for it. I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for a first survey of African history.

I would like to have seen more maps, with less information on each map.

I'm not sure the book would make a good text for college, but it makes a great book for general reading.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent survey for the first-time reader
Review: I am a fan of Shillington and I expected more from this book. His effort to glorify African leaders and condemn Europeans makes this text biased and inaccurate. I would recommend Blaine Harden's "Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent."

Rating:
Summary: The worst Africa survey I have yet encountered.
Review: Kevin Shillington's organization and structure serve well the one semester survey course in African history. There are 29 chapters from pre-history to post-independence Africa. The maps are excellent - the best I have seen. The book does not get bogged down into too much detail but has the most important concepts, people and events. We use it at the Air Force Academy every year with no plans to change in the near future.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Analysis of Africa
Review: Shillington provides a good survey style textbook on African history from antiquity to the modern period. He covers in great detail and quality of the relationship between Africa and Islam as well as the nature of slavery and apartheid. He covers the slave trade in quite a bit of detail, explaining the value of the African as a marketable commodity. He also explains the origins of apartheid as a colonial parting gift that became entrenched racist national policy for more than fifty years. Shillington's survey is quite appropriate for a high school African history class, an undergraduate African history survey or introduction or even as a first book for a graduate African history course. The topics covered here are obviously from an Africanist point of view although there is a minimum, if any, level of bias on Shillington's part.

Rating:
Summary: Admirable Intention
Review: The book is written from an African point of view, which is badly needed in the current world of academia. Shillington does a great job of portraying things from the "other side". The only defect is that he can sometimes be too sympathetic to the other side and penalize westerners, giving the book a slight bias. Despite this, it is an excellent book for getting a look into African history from another angle.

Rating:
Summary: Admirable Intention
Review: The book is written from an African point of view, which is badly needed in the current world of academia. Shillington does a great job of portraying things from the "other side". The only defect is that he can sometimes be too sympathetic to the other side and penalize westerners, giving the book a slight bias. Despite this, it is an excellent book for getting a look into African history from another angle.