Taking Sides: Clashing Views on African Issues

by William G. Moseley

This Third Edition of TAKING CLASHING VIEWS ON AFRICAN ISSUES presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript. An instructor’s manual with testing material is available for each volume. USING TAKING SIDES IN THE CLASSROOM, ISBN 0073343900 is also an excellent instructor resource with practical suggestions on incorporating this effective approach in the classroom. Each TAKING SIDES reader features an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites and is supported by our student website, www.mhcls.com/online.

Genres: Africa

416 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Following its description, this book provided a sampling of contrarian articles for the reader, covering a wide array of subjects affecting the African continent. While not all of the articles were engaging (in my opinion), I found the book did a good job of providing primer material for those interested in these topics and African studies.

For those not familiar with the book series, it is a textbook designed to provide introductions to various issues for further debate. Hence, people are critical of it because its a textbook. But I found it did exactly what it promised to do. My only major critique is that some of the articles were already over a decade old at the date of publishing (2009).

[Dara B · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a required reading for one of my anthro classes. All I can say is - don't waste your time on this book! While I like the idea of juxtaposing two views on an issue to promote discussion in the classroom, the actual book was a huge disappointment. The articles chosen often had nothing to do with each other, most of them were terribly shortened and therefore missed important points that were crucial to the authors' arguments, and finally, not all of the articles lived up to the standards of an academic text. I think the only two issues that were worth reading at all were Transatlantic Slave Trade and Female Genital Cutting.