Maghreb

Annotations sometimes run to nearly a page for the more than 500 books described and evaluated on the western region of north Africa stretching from the Libyan desert to southern Mauritania. Though works focusing on one of the five countries are included, the bibliography considers the region as a whole. The sections include geography and environment, early accounts, prehistory, history from Carthage to recent nationalist movements, language, women, law and human rights, labor relations and trade unions, and indigenous literature and folklore. Finding sources on specific topics, for example post-colonial French literature, would be much less time consuming if the index included subheadings for some of the more commonly mentioned subjects. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.