Africans: A history of the continent by John Illiffe
ISBN: 9780521682978
Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2007
Soft cover, 365 pages
In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the AIDS epidemic, John Iliffe refocuses its history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, and their social, economic and political institutions have been designed to ensure their survival. In the context of medical progress and other twentieth-century innovations, however, the same institutions have bred the most rapid population growth the world has ever seen. Africans: The History of a Continent is thus a single story binding living Africans to their earliest human ancestors.