Inside Africa

Product Information

The African people speak something like seven hundred main languages and innumerable tribal dialects. Slight dent to edge of rear cover, and possibly damp or spill affecting extreme bottom corner of last few pages with crinkling. slight fading to spine, slight usage soiling to covers, small pencil mark half-title page, otherwise book clean and tight. I think the chapters dealing with the Union of South Africa are the sharpest, most acute, and possibly the saddest in this book.

He gets to travel through the beginning of the Algerian Crisis, the Mau Mau Rebellion, and Apartheid, all related to the wider phenomenon of decolonization and the reduction of European influence throughout the continent. During that time he logged 300,000 miles through 48 African countries, covered wars and coups and managed to preserve some hope. John Gunther was one of the best known and most admired journalists of his day, and his series of "Inside" books, starting with Inside Europe in 1936, were immensely popular profiles of the major world powers.

In French Equatorial and in French West Africa relations between the natives and the French are more flexible and easy than elsewhere. The racial tensions which exist in one section are almost wholly different from those prevailing in another. While publicly a bon vivant and modest celebrity, Gunther in his private life suffered disappointment and tragedy. Sudan was experiencing finding its own way after Britain and Egypt stepped back from their joint sovereignty, and was declared an independent state. As soon as you feel the weight of the book in your hands it certainly feels like it's an effort to cover a continent.

Lamb's book: With time, he concludes, Africa will find itself and assert itself; yet the evidence presented in his book - of personalized power at the top and popular lethargy in the nether regions of society - would seem to indicate that Africa's time, so far, has been as wasted as its vast agricultural and mineral resources. On the British West Coast we have encountered the highest advance of colonial peoples toward effective selfgovernment. Gunther’s descriptions and narrations agreeably relieve the fairly heavy doses of outright political statistics.Gunther in his short chapter devoted to French West Africa has treated the subject somewhat inadequately. In 1942, as a Staff Officer in G2, he was assigned to the section covering the campaign in North Africa, and after the successful termination of that operation he teas sent to Dakar as our Military Observer in French West Africa. First edition hard back binding in publisher's original black cloth covers, silver title and author lettering to the spine, end paper maps. If his experiences there came at the end of his long journey, it may well be that he was tired and could not attack this subject with his usual élan.