The Search for Africa: A History in the Making.

Basil Davidson's incalculable impact upon the international awareness of Africa is partly caught by the listing of his books. This runs to no less than 24 items and excludes the millions of words he wrote in an influential career as an unusually well-informed journalist. His first listed book came out in 1952; his penultimate book was published forty years later. That book, Africa and the Curse of the Nation State (also published by James Currey and reviewed in these pages by John Lonsdale in vol. xxxiv, no. 1, 1993), is brimful with frequently uncomfortable honesty, ebullient but always stylish vigour and originality; like the volume under review, it is the product of a man …