"Into Africa" is a wonderful, almost breathless, whirlwind tour of the African continent. The travels described in the book may have begun as a search for what remains of the ancient empires that once existed, but became as much a discovery of what Africa is today, and what it will become.

Authors Marq De Villiers and Sheila Hirtle divide the book (and the continent) into nine sections, each with its own distinct character and history. Part one looks at southeast Africa, highlights of which include a visit to the impressive stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe, ruins which produce a sound when one's ear is pressed against them, the source unknown. We are introduced to the Makuni or the "Living Stones" of Zambia, named not after the famous explorer and missionary but rather for the fact that a chief begins his duties by swallowing a small stone, which lodges in his gut and becomes an embodiment of his people. This region is also home to the colorful Maasai warriors, often noted by tourists in colorful red garb (so that people will want to photograph them), nomadic pastoralists that have been pushed out of the increasingly artificial wildlife sanctuaries of Ngorongoro and the Serengeti despite having lived there for many hundreds of years.

Part two looks at the east coast of Africa, the lands of the Swahili speakers. Fabled east Africa, long a tropical coast skirted by (increasingly threatened) coral reefs and (disappearing) dhows, one can still find along it Lamu, near the Somali border, still an island of coral brick buildings and mosques dating back to the 14 century. Even more famous is exotic Zanzibar, fabled island known to the ancients and part of Tanzania in name only, once a famous source of spices.

The third section looks at southern Africa, a land largely shaped by the Zulus and the migrations they caused in the 1800s thanks to the tyrant Shaka Zulu. We read about mountainous Lesotho, well known for its conical hats, vigorous ponies, and blankets (called Victorians), a distinct national character that is only 150 years old, invented by arguably Africa's wiliest diplomat, Moshoeshoe the Great; and Swaziland, one of the last of the traditional African monarchies, famous for the Umhlanga or Reed Dance, where barely clad young maidens symbolically offer themselves to the king as brides. The enigmatic San or Bushmen of the Kalahari also receive attention.

Part four looks at the ancient rain forest lands of the Kongo, long a source of slaves for the world and even well into the 20th century under the yoke of forced labor by France (in the Congo) and Belgium (in Zaire). It is a troubled region, but one of great contrasts; separated by the Stanley Pool of the mighty Congo River are two very different capital cities; Brazzaville of Congo the authors describe a sleepy and pleasant town, in vivid contrast to Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, a much larger, angrier, and dangerous city. Some of the most interesting passages in the book are in this section, particularly of his travels up the Congo River, in war torn Angola, and among the pygmies of Cameroon.

The fifth section looks at the Gulf of Guinea, long fabled as the Gold Coast and dominated by the fierce Ashanti, bold enough to challenge the British Empire and almost win. Of particular interest are violent and overpopulated Nigeria; the country of Benin (growing more into a model of how Africa could be), whose ancient kingdom of Dahomey was once noted for "Amazon" warriors; Togo, where vodun (the African incarnation of Haitian voodoo) still reigns; Ghana, perhaps the most "Christian" of the west African nations and a robust democracy; and Liberia and Sierra Leone, whose prospects are gloomy indeed.

Section six was quite interesting, examining the peoples and old empires of the Sahel, the grasslands bordering the southern Sahara, as well as the Sahara itself. Once dominated by a series of mighty empires, first Ghana for over 800 years, then Mali, the greatest perhaps of Sub-Saharan African empires, then nearly 400 years later the Songhai. Fabled Timbuktu is covered in this section, the desert city a center of Islamic learning from the 14th century on. The authors' coverage of Mali is especially interesting, notable for Mansa Musa, an African king so extravagantly wealthy he was well known in 14th century Europe after his pilgrimage to Mecca, and his predecessor, Abu Bakari II, the Voyager King, who actually sought to reach lands he believed to exist on the other side of the Atlantic, disappearing from history when he accompanied personally 2000 vessels for a perilous journey into the unknown. Also fascinating was coverage of the Tuareg or "Blue Men" of the Sahara, a fair-skinned desert nomad group where the men go veiled, not the women, and the Dogon tribe, cliff-dwellers in southern Mali that are neither Christian nor Muslim but have instead their own complex religion.

The later sections of the book are somewhat shorter, but no less interesting. Part seven looks at the Maghreb and the Barbary Coast of North Africa, an area once controlled by the now extinct Carthage, the land of the Berbers, the Bedouin, and the Moors, once dominated by the Almoravid and the Almohad civilizations, in part infused from the Andalucian culture of Islamic Spain. Part eight devotes some time to Egypt, which the authors maintain it is definitively a part of African civilization, and Ethiopia, a fascinating land of rock-hewn churches and according to some the home of the Ark of the Covenant, and once dominated by the powerful Axumite Empire. The book closes with the Great Rift, believed by paleontologists to be the true cradle of mankind, home to the enigmatic Chwezi or BaChwezi empire, the fabled Mountains of the Moon, and the horror that was Idi Amin in Uganda and is the conflict between the Tutsi and the Hutu in Rwanda and Burundi.

A fantastic book!

I really enjoyed this book because it was well written history of the African people. The man who wrote this book is an exceptional writter for National Geographic. He seems to have a very good perpective upon the history of the African people. The other great thing is he provides a source for the Pharoah Khufu being an African person. He shows the deepest respect to African people and their culture. He is one of the only white writters on Africa that seem to do this. We have other people like J PHilipe Rushton,John R Baker,and the people behind the bell cruve seem to be on a cultural campain to posion the masses.
I wish however the writter would have went more indepth into African spirtuality. He does talk about the Mountains of the Moons being the source of the acient Egyptains.

The major highlight of this book is that it mentions every country on the continent; many books which view Africa as a whole tend to stick with maybe a dozen of the 45 countries that make up Africa, but the authors have touched, albeit briefly, along all modern African states, and attempt to bring them together as a whole, and make cohesive conclusions about the continent. The continent - a real study of the continent in all of its incarnations. As an overview of the continent, as a pair of authors taking the long view, and reaching unique and enlightening conclusions, there is no better book.

This easy to read and conversational book can be used as an introduction to the fate of water supplies around the world and their impact on human societies. de Villiers takes us on a chapter-by-chapter dissertation first on the technical aspects of water issues, such as the mechanics of groundwater and dams. Then we proceed to selected examples of water crises around the globe, such as China's dilemma of having too much where it's not needed and too little where it is needed, or the hideous catastrophe of the Aral Sea in the former USSR.

The author takes an admirably middle-of-the-road stance here and usually lets the facts speak for themselves, with just a little bit of opinionating. But his opinions are still quite moderate and level-headed, as he doesn't align himself with either unyielding environmentalists or extreme free trade proponents, both of which he accurately condemns as having very narrow outlooks on the real world. Some of de Villiers' key observations concern the water wars that will probably start erupting in coming years in dry regions of the world. Two countries will probably spend more money in a single day of war than it takes to improve water supplies for both of them for decades to come. Also, de Villiers drives home the point that the worrisome decline of fresh water around the globe is not due to greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, or greens who refuse to let it be used. It's just the natural outcome of humans living like humans. Therefore real human cooperation across all societies is necessary to address the problem.

Unfortunately, the author's chapter-by-chapter approach serves only as an introduction to separate topics of interest, without very much substance behind each one. Also, this subject requires harder economics, politics, and sociology than de Villiers provides here. Therefore this book can best be used as an introduction to these issues before you dive into much more specific books like "Rivers of Empire" by Worster or "Cadillac Desert" by Reisner (focusing on the American West), or the works of the Worldwatch Institute for the international story.

After reading this book I have a slight compunction with each visit to the faucet or garden hose. I must admit I was somewhat incredulous about reading a book about water. However, the author captured my attention early in the first chapter and I found the book difficult to put down thereafter. My expectations of reading material suggestive of an impending water shortage were quickly cast aside. The author demonstrates significant evidence that the world is currently embroiled in a crisis of which most individuals are unware. The mere thought that countries may be led to war to secure a water supply, no matter how realistic, is disheartening. My conscious level of awareness regarding our current water supply has been heightened as a result of reading this excellent book. For more specific details see the reviews by Robert Steele and Charles Sharpless, they are both excellent summaries.

I rank this book as being among the top ten I have read in the decade, for the combined reason that its topic concerns our survival, and its author has done a superior job of integrating both scholarly research (with full credit to those upon whose work he builds) and what must be a unique background of actually having traveled to the specific desolate areas that comprise the heart of this book-from the Aral Sea ("the exposed seabed, now over 28,000 square kilometers, became a stew of salt, pesticide residues, and toxic chemicals; the strong winds in the region pick up more than 40 million tons of these poisonous sediments each year, and the contaminated dust storms that follow have caused the incidence of respiratory illnesses and cancers to explode.") to the heart of China ("According to China's own figures, between 1983 and 1990 the number of cities short of water tripled to three hundred, almost half the cities in the country; those who problem was described as 'serious' rose from forty to one hundred." The author provides a thoughtful and well-structured look at every corner of the world, with special emphasis on the Middle East, the Tigris-Euphrates System, the Nile, the Americas, and China; and at the main human factors destroying our global water system: pollution, dams (that silt up and prevent nutrients from going downstream or flooding from rejuvenating the lower lands), irrigation (leading to salination such that hundreds of thousands of acres are now infertile and being taken out of production), over-engineering, and excessive water mining from aquifers, which are in serious danger of drying up in key areas in the US as well as overseas within the next twenty years. The author provides a balanced and well-documented view overall. His final chapter on solutions explores conservation, technical, and political options. Two statements leapt off the page: first, that it is the average person, unaware of the fragility of our water system, that is doing the most damage, not the corporations or mega-farms; and second, that for the price of one military ship or equipped unit ($100 million), one can desalinate 100 million cubic meters of water. The bottom line is clear: we are close to a tipping point toward catastrophe but solution are still within our grasp, and they require, not world government, but a virtual world system that permits the integrated management of all aspects of water demand as well supply. This book should be required reading for every college student and every executive and every government employee at local, state, and federal levels; and every citizen.

What "A River Runs Through It" is to flyfishermen everywhere, "The Heartbreak Grape" is to viticulturists, winemakers and wine lovers. Simply put, it captures the entire winemaking experience clearly and poetically.

The book begins in the golden hills of California, specifically in the cellar of the Calera Wine Company. Shortly thereafter it flashes back to a cozy December evening when South African Marq de Villiers attended a dinner party at Mount Vernon, New York. A cork was pulled by an unnamed host and wine was served without comment.

"I remember that something struck me about its clarity, a brilliant red, like rubies under fire, and though my memory is probably colored by the warmth of the setting, I know I felt there was something...unusual...about it." The wine is Calera Jensen Mount Harlan Pinot Noir, 1987. The author continues by "...dipping my nose into the glass and inhaling slowly, then taking a small sip. It was rich and complex, with a maddening hint of chocolate and violets. I groped for descriptives, as wine people do, without much luck."

What then follows is quite extraordinary. The author embarks on a journey west to California to discover how this exceptional bottle of wine came to be. But it is not just the story of a particular wine, it is the story of a particular grape, of a particular winemaker, of a particular way of making wine, of interventionist politics, of bureaucracies and critics and complex economics.... It is a broad canvas painted from a rich palette, and in the end the reader is delivered as the final arbiter of the art.

This is a fun book to read. It is both revealing and irreverent. From the primogeniture system in Bordeaux to the endless subdivision of land in Burgundy, de Villiers slices through the layers of tradition and bureaucracy to find the wisdom and practices that have resulted in some of the finest wines the world has ever known. To this stage set Josh Jensen, a young American student who had only recently decided he really enjoyed wine. He travels to where the best wines are made, and begins his education by picking grapes. He hangs around the wineries and translates for non-French-speaking visitors. In the end, he learns the Burgundian style of winemaking and takes it back to the United States, where he finds himself at odds with the then prevailing high-tech methods taught at UC-Davis. What ensures is a 15-year struggle to find the right soil in the right setting to grow the right crop so he could make the right wine from the most fickle of wine grapes, the Pinot Noir--the heartbreak grape. The proof of his success is evidenced not only in the French delegations sent over to find out how he did it, but also--no, especially--in the wine itself.

If you grow a few grapes, make some homemade wine, or simply love to drink the stuff, you'll enjoy this book.

'The Heartbreak Grape' offers an intelligent and amusing look into the trials and tribulations surrounding one man's efforts to produce a domestic wine equivalent to the best Red Burgundies. Mr. de Villiers writes with wit and style, and his engaging commentary provides a sense of drama to the story. Unfortunately, Mr. de Villiers suffers the fate of many who try to decipher the egos, expectations, and experiences of those involved with the complex world of wine. Factual errors abound, ranging from the trivial (mistaking "sulfur dioxide" for "sodium dioxide") to the more disconcerting (as in Mr. de Villiers obvious mis-understandings about the role that science has played in assisting those involved in the production of fine wines). Too, his tendency to indulge in adulatory statements and his willingness to believe all that his protagonists tell him cause the book to, at times, read more like a PR publication than a reasoned view of wine production. In the final analysis, though, the sheer joy, excitement, and obsessiveness of the epic journey of Mr. Josh Jensen and his Pinot noir vines makes for tasty reading.

The book is nothing more than an apology of Apartheid. Despite the authors attempts at justifying apartheid, he sometimes goes to great lengths in trying to explain its existence to the out side world. He also protrays Afrikaaners as people who did not understand the world reaction to their blatant form of nazism, apartheid. It does not help that he potrays the latter as very ethoncentric, curniving and racist individuals.

While sometimes this book plods along with obscure family histories (which, admittedly, is part of its purpose), it remains one of the best attempts at explaining the psychology of the Afrikaner people.

Like most Africans, I had, for a long time, a knee-jerk negative reaction to the Afrikaner people and all they stood for. However, this is the book that first opened my eyes to why the Afrikaners behaved they way they did, and why they may have believed that apartheid, universally abhorrent as it was, was necessary.

Please read it.

As a distant relative of the author my primary reason for purchasing the book was to research family history which is covered in snippets throughout the book. I got more than I bargained for! As a South African I do not believe that ANY justification can ever be attempted for the criminal apartheid system. I do not believe the author attempts this. The book simply mirrors the actions and mindsets of a squabbling tribe - warts and all - to reflect another angle and enhance the world's understanding of how a 'chosen people' can come to believe they have a 'divine right' of superiority over others. There are valuable insights here that apply to squabbling communities and nations in the global village of 2003. South Africa did NOT remain an apartheid state - that is the point so many others do not get. The White Tribe - still with warts and all - helped build what is now a proud democracy. I would love to see a sequel to 'White Tribe' to gain an insight into the current mindsets of the tribe.

"Sahara" by Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle: sub-titled "A Natural History" Copyright 2002 by Jacobus Communications Corp.

This book opens with a major error. On page 13, the authors say, "In 1803 George Washington made war against the beys". ("Bey" being a Turkish or Egyptian title.) Of course, this is impossible since George Washington died in 1799. I believe the authors wanted Thomas Jefferson.

On page 12, "Many of these countries are, qua countries with national governments and seats in the United Nations"....
"qua countries"? Forgive me, but is this some South African usage of English/Latin?

On page 14, they speak about the French overrunning Algeria with "...European protectorate" being called "...a nice imperial euphemism", which is okay in today's politically correct jargon. But, then, in the next two pages the authors describe the French, Italians and Spanish all moving into "...provinces of the decaying Ottoman Empire"... without sensing the illogic of not defining the Ottoman's imperial aspirations as being as bad as those of the Europeans. Page 16: "In 1835 the Ottoman Turks sent a fleet to assert a rather more direct control..." in what was later called Libya. What? Italian Europeans in Libya are imperialists and Ottoman Turks do not deserve the same label? Too Much. Too politically correct.
On page 15: "...Tunisia was called Ifriqiyah, from the Roman word for Africa..."; now the Romans spoke Roman. Or was it Latin? It would have been interesting for the authors to show how "Africanius" metamorphosed into "Ifriqiyah".

Too much. Too many. The authors should submit their manuscript (it is not yet a book) to a competent historian and to a person competent in geography for fact checking and screening. While the manuscript is there, perhaps they can do a global change and replace the many contractions, "it's" and "don't" with "it is" and "do not" respectively. If such contractions are not permitted in an MA thesis why allow them in a formal book?

The tome starts out with several surprising historical errors in the first 20 or so pages, making you suspect of the remainder. The authors attribute America's early response to North African brigandry to the wrong President and the wrong year, then ascribe the "most perfect architectural monuments (of Moorish Spain)" to the Almohads and Almoravids (p. 13), fanatic fundamentalist Islamic movements that were in fact central to the decline of the great society that built these places. They move on to delicately describe the tyrant and terror monger Muammar Qadafi of Libya as, "mercurial...whatever his politics and his quirks and his erratic ambitions". How nice. Perhaps a book on the 'mercurial' Qadafi is in the works by authors de Villiers & Hirtle? In any event, the narratives are indeed vivid but they attempt to re-create the mood of 19th century travel guides with minimalist maps and black and white photos. These photos, without anything to measure the scale of the places they describe and often from archival sources, do these unique and remote places few of us will ever lay eyes upon a great injustice. All the more unfortunate because the topic is quite fascinating.

Knowing very little of the history of the area of Africa now covered by the vast Sahara desert I found this an extremely fascinating journey as a novice on an area of the planet vaster than the US. Commencing with a brief glance to see if it was worth progressing I found the authors opening with a geographical account of the history of the Sahara, moving rapidly from West to East, spending time on the littoral, touching on the major empires that influenced it over the past two thousand years. Despite the fact that even this novice spotted the glaring error of George Washington's posthumous invasion it proved sufficiently interesting after a first skim through to sit down and read it avidly.
The book moved on in Part One to discuss some of the sources of Saharan history and geography, heavily referencing Leo Africanus and Ibn Battuta as it attempts to give a geographical definition to the vast desert. It was interesting to find the desert is only 15percent sand. There are reflections on the ever-changing nature of the sands giving examples where it has swallowed towns whole (there is an interesting anecdote on the Arawan Hilton) and latest theories on the epochal history of the Sahara and its current movement. We hear stories of legendary armies swallowed by the sands (Cambyses being prominent) learn of the Grand Dune over 400 feet high and thirty miles long, discover that dunes come in all sizes and types, of their dancing movement (saltation and impact creep). We meet some Sahara travellers, namely, A'Yoba and come across bones whom the sands have claimed. Moving through the border of Cameroon to Chad the winds follow and we learn of the terrible hamrattan north-west wind, then the great aquifers and how under the desert satellite imaging reveals ancient riverbeds. We hear that Lake Chad is the Sahara's largest lake yet it is shrinking fast. We are taught the rainfall cycles and of rivers such as the Nile, the Niger, the Idrisi (the only perennial being the Iherir in Algeria) and oases such as Timia. As the book progresses the Massifs of Central Sahrara come into play and how life itself has survived in the Sahara from humans to plants, to the sad end of the 'Arbre de Tenere.' to the animals that roam.
Part Two dealt with the people who lived in the Sahara, from the first neolithic hunter-gathers to the first culture of the Aterians through to Pharanoic Eygpt. We are shown rock art, the stirrings of language, and how adversity shaped the population centres as the deserts came. Details on the ancient Saharan Empires: Eygpt, Mali, Tekrur, Old Ghana, Almohad, Almoravid, Hausa, Kanem-Bornu, Songhai and Garamantes are given and explored, their key known histories related. We move on through the various invasions of the Romans, Alexander, Arabian, Phoenician, Vandals, Byzantines and many more. From this the authors touch on more recent political wars, the Fulani theocracies, before narrowing down onto routes, mainly created trade routes for trading salt, gold and slavery. From here we focus on the nomadic peoples of the Sahara, notably the Tuareg.. We hear of the resourceful Tubu who can live for three days on a single date and are taken to the wedding feast of the Tuareg, Ahmed before setting off with a camel caravan across the Erg de Tenere. Stories of the great 52-day crossings from Morocco to Timbuktu, of the Air-Bilma-Zinder triangle abound and on the trip we see the infamous mirages caused by dehydration. We end with the centuries old question of how these peoples who have resided here for so long are able to navigate across the empty expanses and touch, at the last, on how the modern world has begun its intrusion.
As this is the first book on the Sahara I have read I cannot comment too much on its historical and geographical validity. However, the narrative skips from geography to sociology, from north to south, from past to future like the shifting sands themselves. The sheer scale of information packed into the pages is impressive. There is a sense of being with a narrator, but the narrator never intrudes. It is more a set of paragraphs, loosely collected under each chapter, but presented in a factual or anecdotal manner that makes for easy and cetainly interesting reading.