I read the 1966 (second)edition of this volume and was not aware of updates until opening this site. Despite much political and demographic change in Africa over the last 30-odd years, and despite the availability of much more research and the advent of DNA-based studies, not even heard of in 1966, I found Oliver and Fage's work a pleasure to read. Their chapters are intelligently organized, the flow of ideas and trends unblemished by superfluous detail or tedious asides. The entire continent is covered, North Africa as well as Sub-Saharan, though personally, I felt a little more could have been said about Madagascar. As a reader without a professional stake in African history, I found this book just the thing. It raised many issues that I had not thought of, told me about many patterns and issues of which I had known nothing, and did so in clear, concise language which kept my interest throughout. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in African history. I myself will look for an updated edition to see what the authors say about the last third of a century.

Weighing in at less than three hundred pages on a history as convoluted and mysterious to Americans as that of Africa it still manages to convey at massive amounts of information. This is also it's main weakness dumping extras like style and readability it gets incredibly frustrating at times. The subject is fascinating though. The sections on the approaches taken by the various holding countries to release their holdings and transfer rule are fascinating.

Roland Oliver's second edition of this useful book offers good chapters on Africa in the 1990s and an essay about its future as well as and excellent overview of African history. Oliver is expert and thurough. The book is well organized and on the whole interesting. However, because it is an overview the book picks up subjects and drops them in a page or two often after offering just enough to generate genuine interest. This is of course to be expected, but would be more forgivable if the author had included a list of books to read for more information on specific subjects or a bibliographic essay. More troubling is Oliver's tendency to apologize too much for the colonial powers that divided and subjugated Africa. Still, the book is valuable and lives up to its billing.