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In each of these accounts, Berkeley deftly mixes historical background and firsthand reporting to show how political leaders use the absence of functional institutions of law and accountability to maintain or increase their own power and wealth: "It takes leadership, operating in a context of great political upheaval and insecurity—and impunity—to translate hostility and suspicion into violent conflict. The challenge for the beleaguered despot with his back against the wall is to harness that resentment—to stoke it, channel it, even arm it, in order to destabilize opponents and discredit alternatives to the status quo."

While Berkeley intends to universalize the evil he so meticulously documents, the sheer scale of the atrocities he describes may tempt readers to do otherwise, to read his book as an account of uniquely African horrors. Berkeley may have done well to draw parallels between the events he decribes and similar ones in Asia, Latin America, and in the recent history of North America and Europe.

If genocide and tribal violence represent one extreme on the continuum of our commonly traded images of Africa, then exotic adventureland would be the other extreme. That's the mode of Ann Jones's idiosyncratic travelogue, Looking for Lovedu.

With Kevin Muggleton, a British photographer, Jones hatches a plan to drive across Africa. To give the expedition legitimacy, and to aid in raising sponsorship, the duo propose to search for Modjadji V, the Rain Queen of the Lovedu ("low-BAY-doo," also sometimes spelled "Lobedu"), a tribe where women rule. In this African version of Shangri-La, set in a high valley surrounded by mountains in the northern region of South Africa, the Lovedu place "the highest value on traditionally 'feminine' ideals: appeasement, compromise, cooperation, helpfulness, tolerance, generosity, peace." Framed thus, Jones's plan may sound rather dramatic. In fact, there was no mystery about where to find the Lovedu. As the obituaries reported when Queen Modjadji died in June of this year, politicians, Africanists, curiosity-seekers, and assorted supplicants regularly made the pilgrimage to see the rainmaker. But the "quest" serves its purpose, as Jones confesses at the beginning of the book: "the Queen was really nothing to me but a good excuse for gallivanting."

After months of preparation, Jones and Muggleton set out from London in a Land Rover heading south through Europe and enter Morocco, proceeding directly to Mauritania. They drive through the Sahara and pass through Senegal, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, and Ghana. Most of the description focuses on difficult border and police officials and the company of other "over-landers" from Europe and Australia, with whom Jones and Muggleton travel for the early part of the journey. Jones sprinkles in historical background of each country, but we meet precious few Africans, and indeed see little of Africa apart from what is visible from the front seat of the car as it careens along bumpy roads. At one of the few stops along the journey, at the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix in Cote d'Ivoire, Jones laments that those who built it "bought the whole egocentric Western package: capitalism, Christianity, modern technology, monumental architecture."

Jones finds herself in a predicament. Despite obtaining ample funding (they are traveling with a Compaq laptop, Nikkon binoculars, and "thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of state of the art gear"—what was that about "the whole egocentric Western package"?) and despite Muggleton's youth (he is half her age), Jones doesn't seem to be able to influence him to slow down and experience Africa. Eventually she leaves him in Kenya and proceeds with two new traveling companions, both women: Caro Hartsfield from Australia and Celia Muhonuja from Kenya. Finally, on the last leg of the journey, we begin to meet Africans.

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