I read two books about Africa last week. Robert D. Kaplan's Surrender or Starve which focuses on Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia and Howard W. French's A Continent for the Taking which focuses mainly on the Congo and Liberia. Both are part travelogue, part journalism, part history. Surrender or Starve was Kaplan's first book and while interesting and worth reading didn't seem as polished as his later work. It taught me a lot about the reasons for famine and conflict in the Horn of Africa. French's book focused more on conflict, coups, revenge, and other human-made disasters in West Africa.

Labels: africa, books, nonfiction

posted by Kristin Buxton at 3:25 PM