Lonely Planet Africa on a Shoestring

As others note, the continent is too large to contain in one book for travel purposes. What this book does is give an EXCELLENT intro to history, culture, people, cities, regions, and tourist attractions/locales/interests. Gives the mind a framework for Africa and potentially to guide decisions about vacation options. For actual travel, more specific literature is needed, but this book is an excellent opening to understanding and contemplating Africa. I was enthralled!

This book is great for those who are thinking about taking a trip to Africa or for those who have a general interest in the continent. For those who would like to go to Arica(which I encourage people to do).This book will help you decide where you would like to go because of the many short chapters on each of the countries. After you decide where you want to go, I would recommend getting more up to date and detailed information because this book could use some more detail on individual countries. I also liked this book for the brief histories on each of the countries. Much of this information is difficult to find and would require much time reading obscure books on the subject. These countries have facinating histories and the book does help to shed a little light on that subject.

Africa is large, and it's hard or impossible to concentrate so much information and advice into one book. Yet, Lonely Planet - as always - managed to do this with great muster. Unless you have time and money to buy the many LP guides to single regions and countries of Africa, this is the book you want before you even plan of visiting the black continent !

Too much material! The result is a very superficial glance at every country in Africa, without enough substantial detail to truly aid travelers in many given regions. I used the book while traveling through Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and the Congo (Zaire). Chapters dealing with Ethiopia and Congo were noticeably deficient. These chapters not only lack information, but often provide erroneous information which can be much more aggravating and perhaps dangerous. Other chapters dealing with Uganda, Zanzibar, and Kenya, particularly Nairobi, were well-written, accurate, and helpful. My overall feeling is that a traveler would be much better equipped by purchasing the regional guides published by Lonely Planet, such as East Africa or West Africa... not this huge, all-encompassing guidebook. For countries not covered, such as Ethiopia or Djibouti, check out Rough Guide or Moon Publications. All of these options offer much more current information than provided here. If you take a look at LP's Guidebook to Kenya, you will see that it alone has 384 pages! It is simply impossible to condense this into a single worthwhile chapter in the Africa on a Shoestring Guide. I still gave the book four stars based on the simple fact that it provides excellent maps of the major cities and destinations in Africa and at least a framework for orienting yourself in a given place. If you are backpacking and need to save space, this book does help you out immensely, which is probably its intended function. Just don't put too much faith in it for providing accurate, current details on lodging, transport, or the current "scene."

This is a travel book for people who don't need or want to be led by the hand. It gives you the information you need to get by -- cheap places to stay, key sights, modes of travel -- and lets you do the exploring on your own.