North African Conundrum

Impartial but highly readable, this book compresses into 252 pages the principal events of the Mediterranean shore of Africa over more than two thousand years, and provides an interesting survey of the Barbary Coast’s tremendous problems nowadays. Mrs. Nickerson, who once was assistant to Hilaire Belloc, has applied to her task Belloc’s principle of seeing the things and the men before writing history. She traveled, for instance, in the remote Sahara, and once found herself bouncing in a wild ride from a French garrison-post to the nearest dentist—hundreds of desert miles distant—with a bottle of brandy to keep down the pain of her abscessed tooth.

A Short History of North Africa: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, from Pre-Roman Days to the Present, by Jane Soames Nickerson. Devin-Adair, $4.50

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Russell Kirk

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Impartial but highly readable, this book compresses into 252 pages the principal events of the Mediterranean shore of Africa over more than two thousand years, and provides an interesting survey of the Barbary Coast’s tremendous problems nowadays. Mrs. Nickerson, who once was assistant to Hilaire Belloc, has applied to her task Belloc’s principle of seeing the things and the men before writing history. She traveled, for instance, in the remote Sahara, and once found herself bouncing in a wild ride from a French garrison-post to the nearest dentist—hundreds of desert miles distant—with a bottle of brandy to keep down the pain of her abscessed tooth.

A Short History of North Africa: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, from Pre-Roman Days to the Present, by Jane Soames Nickerson. Devin-Adair, $4.50