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byz 's review for:
African Europeans: An Untold History
by Olivette Otele
Otele does a great job at moving the reader around Europe and through time in a way that gives a cohesive rather than fractured view of African Europeans.
That said, I found a lot of the book was based on conjecture and assumption. That might be because this is a relatively new field; perhaps I’m missing the broader narrative that would fill in those gaps. Yet in the first chapter, dealing with a period and subject matter in which I am more familiar, I didn’t find that the evidence for the author’s assertions was compelling, mostly due to a scarcity of evidence.
This book shouldn’t be dismissed but overall I found it unsatisfying. The period covered is too broad to permit a book of this length to go into greater depth.
That said, I found a lot of the book was based on conjecture and assumption. That might be because this is a relatively new field; perhaps I’m missing the broader narrative that would fill in those gaps. Yet in the first chapter, dealing with a period and subject matter in which I am more familiar, I didn’t find that the evidence for the author’s assertions was compelling, mostly due to a scarcity of evidence.
This book shouldn’t be dismissed but overall I found it unsatisfying. The period covered is too broad to permit a book of this length to go into greater depth.