When I worked in country risk, we tried to put something called “texture” in our country reports. The telling detail, the revealing anecdote. Flesh on the bones of argument. This book by eminent travel writer Paul Theroux is all about texture. Traveling Africa overland after an absence of fifteen years, he documents failing states and the impotence of foreign aid with a novelist’s eye for character and description. And with Theroux’s usual revealing interactions with the people he meets along the way it’s a wonderful read. He’s perceptive on what’s happening, but less so on why, but then, this is a travel book.