A visit to all 44 African countries, including Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, Albert Schweitzer, Tubman of Liberia, Nkrumah, and the Mau Mau of Kenya. Access options Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below.

The long section on South Africa is bogged down in politics and race, and individual biographies of prominent people, and for 30 or so pages my attention waned. e., suppression of four-fifths of the people of the country) and it is in some respects the ugliest government I have ever encountered in the free world. One critic noted that it was Gunther's special gift to "unite the best qualities of the newspaperman and the historian. The majority of this section is dominated by a lengthy interview with Albert Schweitzer - theologian, philosopher, missionary and physician (retired and aged 77 at the time) - who I admittedly have never heard of and was skimming over quickly. To explore the gigantic and diverse continent of Africa and to study the inside workings and problems of its vast populations is an appalling undertaking.Until I read this book I did not know, for example, that the horn of a rhinoceros is made of hair, not ivory; or that hippos “have reddish sweat”; or that the roar of a lion “can be audible at a distance of six or seven miles.

Gunther’s reporting without following in his footsteps — which God forbid — it is satisfactory to me to testify to his thoroughly comprehensive treatment of Liberia and his proper, if uninspired, account of French West Africa. Britain - British objective is to train the Africans for complete self-government, within the Commonwealth. It was, however, when the Gunthers reached the Union of South Africa that they faced the most violent and difficult interracial situation on the whole continent. Written with humor, sympathy and a journalist's verve, it cuts back and forth from personal anecdotes (a spell with Idi Amin's goons, an Ethiopian air raid in the disputed Ogaden) to portraits of individual nations and essays on the larger themes: the role of Marxism, the roots of economic decline, the colonial heritage.

Gunthers task was aggravated by serious eye trouble which made the taking of notes and the reading and rereading of them an ordeal. Tanganyika, starting with Kilimanjaro and Uganda make up the section on British East Africa - Tanganyika being a UN trust territory administered by the British, Uganda a protectorate. Small dampstain on bottom page corners, cloth modestly dampstained, about very good in a very good worn dust jacket with green faded to brown, short nicks on spine ends and corners. Indeed the generation which knew and admired Rudyard Kipling succeeded in convincing itself that white imperialism in backward countries was a helping hand to the natives, drawing them out of darkness into light. Binding tight and appears little read; no annotation or inscriptions - owners name to front end-paper; toning and slight spotting to page-ends but text and maps to endpapers bright and clear throughout.