Review by Choice Review
Much of the expansion of UN peacekeeping over the past decade has involved operations on the continent of Africa. MacQueen provides a comprehensive overview of African operations, beginning with the Congo operation in the early 1960s to ongoing operations in Sierra Leone and Ethiopia/Eritrea. The strength of this book is its clearly written narratives of the key events in over a dozen peacekeeping operations in different parts of Africa. Although MacQueen offers a simple taxonomy of African operations, the chapters are organized according to geographic location of the operation rather than the classification per se. The introductory chapter offers a few theoretical insights into the problems of conflict in Africa, but the case analysis is devoid of any theoretical framework or systematic analysis. The conclusions on peacekeeping success and failure are very brief, based on no explicit criteria, and not novel. This work is a fine introduction to peacekeeping in Africa, but of little scholarly or analytical value. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and lower-division undergraduates. P. F. Diehl University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
