I am confident that when this Republic comes to herself—I mean her African self ... and understands how to co-operate with and utilize her aboriginal population, she will have many things to teach the world for the welfare and advancement of humanity. • Edward Wilmot Blyden

Very interesting book about the Americo-Liberians and the nation they founded but the book quickly drags to a close after the 1980 coup, when they were deposed. Make no mistake, this is a book specifically about this particular group. After all, it's on the title of the book.
Little information is given about modern, post-1980 Liberia (Ex: Charles Taylor, civil wars, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, ebola). Instead, this book is almost purely dedicated to the origins of Liberia as a state and the American-descended Liberians that ran it until that fateful coup in 1980. If you enjoy a premise as interesting as freed slaves creating their own country, I'd recommend this book. If you are perhaps going to Liberia or are interesting in the MODERN politics of the country, I'd recommend you look for something else.

This book is very vivid, as the back cover blurb claims. I also am quite impressed at how the author is able to find such wonderful sources and bring them not just into context but into the living desires and conflicts of these individuals. Nevertheless, this is a survey book and it definitely rushed through many interesting aspects of Liberia’s history. This also makes it difficult to follow certain strands of history and when we reach the overthrow of the Americoes, I felt unprepared to understand the changing dynamics that this coup produced. Indeed, this book’s premise (according to the introduction) was a look backwards from the 1980 coup. But the information about the people orchestrating the coup is quite limited. In fact, most information about the non-Americo people was very limited. I assume this was in big part due to the difference in quality of sources between Americo and non Americo people.

In the end, this book is more of a look into the rise and decay of this class, rather than a way to dig into the complicated social issues of modern Liberia.

Over all, I'd say that this book held my interest. However, to be perfectly blunt, this book is exceedingly dense. This is not a book written in a manner to weave the history of Liberia into a cohesive, linear story. Rather, Ciment's choice is to throw gobs of information at the reader at a rapid pace and then leave them to shuffle through everything. If you have the patience to really focus and pay attention to the barrage of all facts, dates, times, names, and places, then you may find that this book warrants more stars than I'm giving. In addition, the book doesn't necessarily run in a completely linear fashion. True, it's not written completely in flashbacks, however the story-line jumps from decade to decade, presidency to presidency, and time period to time period. In fact, some presidencies and other information is completely overlooked in favor of proceeding to the next part of the narrative.

In short, if you're looking for a scholarly and in depth study of Liberia in a strictly linear fashion, then this is not the book for you. However, if you're looking for something that gives you information about Liberia from multiple different angles, in multiple different ways, then you may find this book intriguing.

My knowledge of Liberia was indeed increased, however, this book really left me with more questions that, unfortunately, I will probably have to read another comprehensive study of Liberia to have answered.

Another America is an obviously well researched book with various quotes and information available on every page, but I did expect there to be more analysis of how the conditions of Liberia's past influence today.
Due to it's heavy and obvious research I found it difficult to focus and read for long stretches of time.

Definitely recommend if you don’t know squat about Liberia or it’s history, I was not familiar at all with the country other than the fact that it was founded by former slaves.

I do wish the book was longer though, as many important people got only a brief mention while transitioning from period to period, jumping throughout time all the way.

And although I know the focus was on the Americoes, I wish more attention had been given to the native groups that lived there, as well as the civil war (which got maybe half a page?)