A helpful glossary, recommended reading list, and thorough index add to the general usefulness. They learned about the US Constitution. We still need visionaries, and schools where we teach our children to be truly citizens. This paperback is an amazing start. It attempts to cover each of the dominant African kingdoms in turn, moving chronologically up to the time of slavery and colonization.
Some sections do shed light on African and African-American history.
Instead, it is neither fish nor fowl, perched between picture book and textbook. The book moves along with a herky-jerky, undigested quality. Even the artwork, by the usually-dazzling Floyd Cooper, seems disconnected to the text. His huge, double-spread paintings dominate but don't illuminate the text. Worse, the reproduction of the art is so grainy that it is sometimes impossible to read the print.