It is a well-written and beautiful book, illustrated throughout with maps and photographs, and a useful bibliographical essay. The achievement of presenting the diversity and vibrancy of apart from many previous interpretations of these challenging and controversial issues. . . . Newman clearly fills a niche in African scholarship by focusing on the largely ignored period of African history before Europeans colonized the continent. The scholarship involved in this effort is commendable. There is much to praise in The Peopling of Africa besides the author's thorough regional coverage.
Beautiful maps populate each chapter.
They represent clearly Newman's narrative devices of migration, trade, and the growth of political scale. This may stand as the book's most important achievement because too many of the other master narrators of early Africa avoid these ten centuries. . . . Intended for a more general readership, the book succeeds in synthesizing a vast array of scholarship in a manner which retains some of the complexities and engages the nonspecialist.