Contemporary African "high" fashion is exciting and innovative yet is often overloked outside of the continent itself. This superbly produced book, a catologue for a major exhibition in Holland, is a wonderful introduction to modern African design. In adition to the terrific photographs, the accompanying essays are informative and provocative. The bargain price makes the volume even more attractive!

Letter to Paula Girshick Ben-Amos, author of "Art, Innovation, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Benin." Your book, "Art Innovation, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Benin", is superb. I'm not a reviewer so the much I can see is that you lead us, the reader, easy and firmly across the ancient history of a Kingdom with her obas, uzamas, ezomos, iyases, chiefs -- and give us a handy list of the obas from Ehengbuda to Akengbuda, and teach us how they were, through the art they left behind. You make ease to understand the Civil War and different behave of various obas and chiefs. As well their relation with the spiritual world. When you refer to Father Monteleone, and the cloths "made in five or, at the most, six months" on pg. 41, using Ryder, you touch in a subject that has connection with Brazil. In the book "A enxada e a lança", (The Hoe and the Spear), the Brazilian writer Alberto da Costa e Silva depicts a panel of Africa, before the Portuguese's arrival (he starts his book on Africa's prehistory), and refers (pg. 526)to Pano da Costa (Cloth from the Coast - Ijebu), largely exported from Benin to Brazil on the first half of Eighteenth Century. It seems, later on, when the slave traffic has ended, and commerce between Bahia (Brazil) and West Coast was very strong, industrialized Pano da Costa, produced in Brazil has turned itself into a largely disputed merchandise all over the Coast, including in Benin . And moreover, in your book you teach us how to see and comprehend the bronzes, plaques, heads, in metal, ivory, clay and wood. Is all absolutely perfect. If one want to have a spotless ideas, in 177 pages, about the Kingdom of Benin, in your book one will find it. So, I indeed have enjoyed your book.

José Luiz Pereira da Costa Brazil e-mail: dacostaq@cpovo.net

I have attempted to provide detailed information that I hope gives you a reasonable sense of the quality of the art being produced by some of Africa's smaller peoples. I hope my book helps ordinary readers, but also teachers and students, to achieve familiarity with some of the issues currently pertinent to minority discourses on power, gender, sex and sexuality, as well as politics and culture.

This is an amazing book, practically one of a kind! The information, illustions, and luster of the indigenous African cultures is beautiful to behold. I recommed introducing young children to cultures and peoples as varied as the come to fully portray to them the true beauty of this creation, life. There is nothing so intricate, so inveloping and powerful as life in this form. Pronounciation is given for the tribes names to bring ease of reading, which is, in fact, very enjoyable.

Admiral Jean-Francois Darlan, heir-apparent to Marshal Petain, is revealed in this book to have been a key player in a pivotal episode in World War II. Behind the mystery of Admiral Darlan's presence in Algiers in November 1942 was a conflict between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on which hung the fate of France.

Darlan in fact was involved in a plan to keep Petain's Vichy government in power as a counter to the growing streangth of Communism. When the terms of the plan was revealed, they shocked all those in Britain, France, and the United States who were backing Charles de Gaulle. On December 24, 1942, the Gaullists, supported by the British Secret Service and the American OSS, and probably with the knowledge of Churchill himself, stood back while a certain "patriot" entered Darlan's office and shot him dead. Drawing on interviews and new-found sources, the author tells the full ugly story of the unknown turning point in the secret battle over who would lead France.

This book has wide-ranging essays on the astronomies of the ancient world (other than Greek and Mesopotamian which are traditionally taken to be the forerunners of Western astronomy). The book is steeply priced, but it is worth it.

It introduces us to the life of a talented, ambitious and well educated man. This is an inspirational journey of an African and of an American. You will not be able to put this book down.

This book changed my life. The facts about what's really going on in Africa shocked me. The stories of women, men, and children suffering from the disease broke my heart. I've now made this my personal crusade!

I am from Thailand and a native Thai.
I read his book; he is my professor.
I am impressed with his idea- the so " socratic idea".
I love his book and everyone should buy it.

Enhanced with both color photographs and drawings, as well as b/w sketches and illustrations, Peter Taylor's Bats Of Southern Africa showcases 78 species of bats native to southern Africa. The reader is provided with clear descriptions and accurate diagnostic features, as well as a wealth of information on the bat's habitat, social and roosting habits, diet, reproduction, echolocation call, distribution, and conservation status. A superb introduction and reference, Bats Of Southern Africa is a welcome and highly recommended addition to wildlife reference collections in general, and the Bat in particular.