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.