The Fortunes of Africa
A 5000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor

I found this to be an extremely disappointing book. My disappointment partially came from how much I enjoyed and got out of the two previous books by Meredith about African history that I've read: The Fate of Africa and In the Name of Apartheid. Actually, what I liked so much about those books helps......more

We can be confident that the Garden of Eden was in Southern Iraq and not in Africa, but we also know that there have always been people in Africa and throughout recorded history it seems they have traded in slaves, gold and ivory with the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Black Africans have......more

It's important that you realize one thing about this book: it is a history of how the peoples and land of Africa have been exploited from Egypt to the present; it not a history of Africa. I'd like to read Meredith do the latter, but this isn't it. It's important to mention this because I can easily......more

Three years ago I read a book by Nigerian-American journalist Dayo Olopade called The Bright Continent. This was an upbeat and optimistic account of the author's experiences in Africa and gave the perception that the African people were up to the challenges facing them. Professor Meredith has, in th......more

For Mr. Meredith to shove 5,000 years of history into about 670 pages of text, he did a remarkable job. Well detailed about every region of Africa, gives us a sense of what the continent was, is, and will become in the future. As the book progresses, he gets to tell us about how Africa became an int......more