The author writes well, and explains well in her writing. I could actually picture myself in numerouse places which she had explained. From The war time, to her weding day, to what she went through during her sisters death.

...a truly excellent real-life story of tragedy and love.

The amazing things that the author went through throughout her life were very uplifting. I laughed and cried throughout. The author's experiences were vividly captured on the pages of the book. I was caught up in the horrific imagery of the war that was described, but also the beauty of her family relationships as well as her love for her country of birth. I recommed this book highly, but be prepared for an emotional roller coaster.

Great book on a sensitive and relatively unknown topic for most Americans. Madsen does a fantastic job of framing the germaine issues for people unfamiliar with the recent economic, political, and military history of south central Africa. Well researched and documented, he tells a compelling story of how the US government works to destabilize the region for economic and political gains.

Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest is a spectacular book that follows a team of twenty scientists, artists, photographers, and filmmakers, into the heart of Africa in their search to find the essence of the rain forest. Guided by the BaAka people, a local tribe, the team spends two months filming and recording the beauty of Africa. They trudge through elephant dung, swarms of "sweat" bees, and thigh-deep flood plains, or bai as it is called in the national language of Sango, to collect items for a unique walk-through rain forest exhibit in New York City. In summary, this book takes readers on a vicarious trip through the rain forest so they can experience its beauty, meet its inhabitants, and learn practical survival skills such as gathering honey, eating termites, and playing basketball BaAka style. Regardless of age, you will find fun and adventure between the covers of Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest!

You may not have recently toured the rain forests of Central Africa, but you can enjoy the lush photographs and readable text about this facinating corner of the world, the Dzangu-Sangha Rain Forest. I am a lover of African lore and found this book to use in my class. My students and I have eaten it up. We marveled at the marvelous pictures and were fascinated by the facts and information we found in the text. We all loved the information about driver ants that can be used to close up wounds that formerly required stitiches. The BaAka people and their customs are carefully documented with care and with dignity. Three sections of ninth graders who have been studying Afrian literature and folklore adored this book. To boot, my own kids, ages 5-13, have poured over the book during family reading hour. I recommended our high school library acquire a copy for student use. It is incredibly readable and suitable for a large audience. It is not to be missed.

I have always been interested in the Central African Republic, and since I don't speak French, it is hard to find material on it-so I was very pleased to find a book like this. The Bokassa saga, shows that truth can be stranger than fiction. After all, if the average American turned on the television special featuring a country called the 'Central African Republic', where the ruler converts at will, stages a coronation in the style of Napoleon, and has a harem of wives from throughout the world-chosen at will, they would dismiss it as a fiction.
Yet it was not, Bokassa and many other tyrants were supported by nations seeking to play their role in the Cold War.
It reminds me of Heart of Darkness, which took place in what is now, CAR's neighbor, Congo, formerly Zaire. While, I admire Titley's attempt to try be factual and trace the story in terms of politics and recorded intrigues. But there is little oral testimony, or information on the local culture and sociology.
This is a shame, because I think this story, or could been on par with chronicles such as Killing Fields, and this lacks the side of the victim. Also, Titley never address the brutalities, frankly, any nonacademic who is reading this wants to be titilated by the accusations of cannabalism and torture-and this issues are not addressed at all-neither dismissed or denied, or resolved. Also, the AUTHOR has access to Bokassa's autobiogaphy [of which all but 2 copies still exist] and it is rarely mentioned. All in all, it is not easy to have written this book, the topic carries the day, but I can't help feeling that this has the taste of an incomplete academic lecture series, that could have used an editor and some pungency.

Brian Titley's account of the life of Jean Bedel Bokassa, self-proclaimed Emperor of the Central African Republic, is an unsettling one.

On the one hand, the personal detail that the author builds up on his subject can paint a fascinating and sometimes engaging picture of the Emperor.

After all, Bokassa was the dictator whose behavior was said to cause embarrassment even to other African despots. A caricature figure, who had warned senior government colleagues on different occasions that he was "properly annoyed" and was thinking of "going for a coup d'etat", he rose to power from an impoverished rural background.

As Emperor, however, he was the giver of envelopes of diamonds to visiting dignitaries; the collector and wearer of a huge collection of period-piece French military uniforms and the unrepentant womanizer who accumulated wives from countries as far distant as Romania and Vietnam.

With his subject never too far from the ridiculous, Titley dredges up some fantastic narrative. Even the photographs tell a story - an image on an early page of the book pictures Bokassa together with his favourite young son on the day of the imperial coronation. Africa's Napoleon, resplendent in a velvet robe, is desperately seeking a regal pose. His son, then aged about six, sits sulkily beside his father, his tasseled white sailor suit topped off with a captain's cap at least three sizes too big for him. He looks like he has rushed straight to the ceremony from an audition for the Jackson Five.

On the other hand - and this is the problem for the reader - much of this colour surrounding Bokassa turns out to be dark and foreboding. Although his alleged taste for human flesh has never been fully proven (nor his preference for the throwing of those that displeased him into his swimming pool of crocodiles) his regime was responsible for the torture and death of hundreds of his countrymen. He personally caved in the skulls of some of them with his favourite walking cane.

Can you enjoy a man's more attractive idiosyncracies when his darker ones include participation in the torture of schoolchildren? Titley does try, in an excellent concluding chapter, to put Bokassa into a political context. He killed fewer people than Dictator X. He stole and extorted less money than Dictator Y. He was aided, encouraged and manipulated by the French throughout his period in power. He lived the closing years of his life in (for him) relative poverty and isolation, deserted by his wives and children. He even chose to return from exile to his native country and face state trial.

More opportunities for the reader to adopt an ambivalent attitude to Africa's Napoleon? Probably not. Bokassa's expressions of remorse seem to have been limited to his sense of personal misfortune. And if we are to be asked to judge him less harshly only against a backdrop of more dangerous and more evil men, then we must ask ourselves if Bokassa may, after all, be deserving of the company that he keeps

This is a most interesting book about one of Africa's most extravagant leaders. Brian Titley does not write with particular elegance or wit, but his account of Bokassa's life seems well documented, even-handed and is thoroughly readeable. The details on the coronation ceremonies or the emperor's love life alone are worth the reading. A five star book on a five star general.