The Search for Africa:: History, Culture, Politics

A prolific scholar and journalist, Davidson has written more than 20 books on Africa, including The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State . His latest is a mixed bag of some 20 essays and reports published during the past 40 years. Readers who are familiar with the author's work will glean the most from this collection, but others will be aided by Davidson's occasional introductions, which not only contextualize his role in the once-infant area of African history but also allow him to describe his anticolonial activism and socialist convictions. Certain important entries are specialized--like his reflections on the ideas of his friend Amilcar Cabral, the assassinated leader of the independence movement in Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde--and some seem dated, e.g., reports from South Africa in the 1950s. Other essays, among them Davidson's excavation of how racism was born in the Atlantic slave trade and his observations on the past as a source of solutions for Africa's current problems, have great contemporary resonance. (Feb.)