I am married to a Jamaican wife, and read any article or book that mentions the country. I came across this book on the CNN Internet several months ago by looking up Jamaica.

My anticipation of this book far outreached the actual reading. The author spends the majority of his time describing the country he is in at the time, and they all seem the same. In detail he tells of the hotels he stays in, where and what he eats, whom he meets along the way, and something about the countless people he asks directions from even though he has a guide. He tells of how the white foreigners arrived in the country, very little of where they fit into the current society, and nothing in between. I realize that time has eroded any written or oral link between the past and now, but in my opinion, this is what was promised. One can read the same few documents that were reprinted in the book on the Internet and glean as much real information as portrayed in the book.

In all I was disappointed with the book.

This book sounded so fascinating that I made two shopping trips to find it in time for a long transatlantic flight. The premise--forgotten descendants of lost empires still clinging to shreds of their heritage in distant and remote lands--was enough to make any adventurous reader salivate. But the payoff was disappointing. Mr. Orizio's characters are two-dimensional and his style rambling. We learn very little about these real people; not enough to learn to care about them very much. This ought to be riveting stuff, but the literary equivalents of archeological relics glitter only rarely. Despite solid historical information, all of it news to me, I came away feeling I'd been on a tour bus that never stopped long enough to see much.

As a person who loves history and anthropology, the title of this book really got my attention and I eagerly anticipated the arrival of this book. I suppose anyone who wants to know more about the descendants of Europeans living in exotic and remote corners of the world would find this topic very interesting. The author tells of how (and under what circumstances) the ancestors of these peoples got there. He also decribes the lives of the members of these communities. These groups are quickly diminishing in numbers due to emigration, assimilation/intermarriage and inbreeding.

The title "Lost White Tribes" is rather misleading though, as only the Jamaican Germans, the Blanc Matignons and some of the Confederados are actually whites. The Dutch Burghers, the Rehoboth Basters, and many of the Confederados as well as the Haitian Poles are in fact mixed-race peoples (ie. Eurasians and Afro-European). From the author's decription, the Haitian Poles despite proudly claiming to be Polish are mainly of African descent with some white admixture.

Hence, I was quite suprised that notwithstanding the title and the fact that there are so many white groups and sub-groups in the New World, including some who live amongst a non-white majority, the author has chosen to include these communities. There are still French white creole communities in Mauritius and the Carribean islands, Mennonites in Belize as well as various distinct communities made up of descendants of Germans and other continental Europeans in Latin America. When I was in the Philippines, I found out that there were still many wealthy Spanish families descended from 16th century settlers.

I give this book 4 stars because the author wasted too much time describing in detail the place he stayed in, whom he met along the way to asks directions and what he and his companions did (eg. his encounter with a pimp in Sri Lanka, his misadventures with a Protestant minister in Haiti, the two kids he hung out with in Jamaica etc.) He should have used the space in the book to have included more communities.

The book had some interesting parts but was overall a dull experience. It did prompt me to take a Namibian safari but overall it was below average.

This is by far the best of the best when it comes to books on Namibia, Africa's most mysterious nation. Tahir's prose is as smooth as silk. Buy it and enjoy!

This book has some pretty pictures, a decent foldout map, and a quick overview of the regions of Namibia. It is not a bad source for the early stages of planning a trip to this wonderful country and deciding which regions to visit. But it lacks the detail of some guides (e.g., Footprint Handbooks Namibia, Lonely Planet) and the larger and nicer photographs of other guides (e.g., Insight Guides Namibia) or the gorgeous coffee table books (e.g., Hoberman's Namibia).

While the struggle to free Namibia is over, this book still illustrates the apartheid-era view that once dictated that Namibia remain a South African colony. Maddening and inaccurate, this book is recommended only if you are interested in learning more about this discredited perspective. Now that Namibia is a 7-year old stable democracy, the views represented here have entered the dustbin of history.

I am a Belgian anthropologist who lived for two years in what is supposed to be one of the most remote regions in the world. Unfortunately, this book does its utter best to emphasise this impression. It creates an exoticising and eroticising image of Himba culture by the way it represents and quite literally pictures their nomadic life-style, their body-dress and their daily life. Going through it only makes me mad and sad at the same time. May be it is because the photographers are specialised in portraying wildlife. Anyway, it creates a picture of life in Himbaland that is more concruent with the international tourist market than it is with the views, knowledge, power and tradition of the OvaHimba themselves.