I'm often asked for book recommendations, but regarding African history in general, a high-level yet comprehensive summary is borderline self-contradictory. So what are the challenges that an all-encompassing book on Africa must overcome?

The first problem is that Africa is a huge place. It makes absolutely no sense to write a general purpose book on the history of the whole continent. The over-ambitious books that manage to pull off the trick / fulfil its promise are either those with a clear thread running through them (the poor in Africa, the peopling of the continent, slavery in Africa, rural women in Africa, etc.), or those whose authors restrict their study to a well-defined period or area (West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade, French colonial rule, cloth in West Africa, etc.). At the same time, there is a demand from a keen public for a book that "explains Africa", and this is a balance that well-written books by specialists for a wide audience have to strike.

A second problem, though, concerns the sources used. In the particular case of Africa, most of the history available "in the West" has been written by outsiders. This means that (especially in the earlier texts) there is a very strong sense of otherness when dealing with African actors; local societies were seen through the lens of social anthropology and not sociology, and older descriptions of how things were in Africa are contrasted with no longer held European understandings of the time. Moreover, it is urgently needed to have more Africans given the chance to write and publish about their history, not on the basis that there is a distinct 'African cosmovision' [there is not], but because otherwise the field will continue to perpetuate tired stereotypes that are not only often prejudiced but also false. I personally continue citing mostly from non-African authors—there are structural reasons behind it, mostly related to the lack of funding available for African historians—yet I have not challenged my priors as much as I should.

• I recently had the chance to read Toyin Falola and Timothy Stapleton's A history of Africa (available in one or two volumes) and I found it outstanding for entry-level readers. Not only is it written by an experienced Nigerian scholar with a very long career, the book also guides you through important historiographic debates and should be in every public library.

• History of Africa by Kevin Shillington is a very decent core textbook commonly used for introductory undergraduate courses. The book is in its fourth edition, and though the publisher is trying to migrate the content to online access only, it is not hard to find cheaper third editions.

• Africans: The History of a Continent (1995) by John Iliffe is a favorite of mine. It covers from the prehistory to 1994, and the subsequent editions (2007 and 2017) add an additional chapter that deals with the impact of AIDS on the continent. What makes this book different is that it is a reference book with a narrative focused on the peopling of the continent; demographic and environmental history are the means through which Iliffe presents Africans as pioneers struggling against nature and diseases. A free PDF version of it is floating on the internet.

• And if you read German, Afrika: Welten und Geschichten aus dreihundert Jahren (2021) by Helmut Bley is a one volume encyclopedia of African history. Bley created an enhanced Shillington that includes social and cultural history.

The following books are about a more specific region, time period, or theme:

• Toby Green's A fistful of shells focuses on West Africa during the early modern period and is also amazing. For the medieval period, scarce as the sources are, I suggest The golden rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages published by François-Xavier Fauvelle (translator Troy Tice).

• The only think to dislike in Colleen Krieger's Cloth in West African history is that the book was printed in black and white, and Africa in global history by Falola and Salau highlights Africa's role in global history.

• John Thornton's Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World tries to place Africa at the center of the developments of the modern world. This book was followed by A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820, an even more ambitious text that also studies Europe and the Americas.