This is a very 20th Century Western approach to history. It focuses on the West’s involvement in Africa, which means we get the Romans in Egypt and then not much of anything until the 1800s during the explorers’ time. It reads like a textbook for a survey course, more a chronicling of events than a history of people. Reading this felt like an afternoon of watching NFL RedZone; jumping from big event to big event in a rapid succession to where I am aware of most of the major things that happened, but I have no clue of the context for any of it. A book of such incredible breadth is simply a bad idea. It serves no purpose other than to help answer some trivia questions or impress party guests if they happen to be into 20th Century African dictators. I was particularly appalled at the amount of coverage he gave to the AIDS epidemic: 1 page. This is the style of history that kept my generation wondering why we bother studying it. You might as well go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.