The Demography of Tropical Africa by William Brass, Ansley J. Coale, Paul Demeny, Don F. Heisel, Frank Lorimer, Anatole Romaniuk, and Etienne van de Walk. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968. pp.xxiv + 540.

This book is a fascinating “who done it” and a thriller of the first order. That is if one has the stamina and the equipment to work one’s way through it. Your reviewer considers himself a trained demographer and comes out of possibly the most rigorous demographic school. He was an Africanist for” many years. He worked with one of the main techniques employed in this book for ten years and was familiar with another group of methods used by the authors for fifteen years. Yet he found it tough going. The book is long and difficult. One wonders who will be the readers.