Mammoth, highly informative and readable, this important new survey seems destined to become the contemporary equivalent of Inside Africa. Ungar covers the countries of major interest to Americans-Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa-in full-length portraits. He also provides vignettes of many others and thumbnail statistical profiles of all the countries of sub-Sahara Africa. The frankly downbeat assessment of Africa's prospects emerging from the individual studies is summed up in a broad-ranging overview drawing together political and economic trends. This useful book should be widely read.