Volume 39, Number 11 · June 11, 1992
Africa's Lost History
By Neal Ascherson
The African Experience: Major Themes in African History from Earliest Times to the Present
by Roland Oliver
Harper Collins, 284 pp., $23.00
The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912
by Thomas Pakenham
Random House, 738 pp., $32.00
It is now sixteen years since Dr. David Western, an ecologist, threw a ball of dry elephant dung at Dr. Andrew Hill, a paleontologist. The two scientists were gamboling, as learned mammals sometimes do, on a dry riverbed in Tanzania. Dr. Western missed, but Dr. Hill fell over. Given their respective professions, this was a lucky division of functions, because while on his knees Dr. Hill noticed a series of pockings on the rock surface around him.
Review, 4573 words
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