Like other areas of the humanities and social sciences, African studies has been taking increasing account of space as an analytical category. This collection, edited by Engel (politics in Africa, U. of Leipzig, Germany) and Nugent (comparative African history, U. of Edinburgh, UK), contains eight papers from a June 2009 European Conference on African Studies that was dedicated to taking stock of the spatial turn in African studies. The papers discuss the broad spatial history of Africa since 1700, "Siamese twin" towns and unitary concepts in border inequality; the African Union Border Programme in European comparative historical perspective, the stepwise migration process of sub-Saharan African migrants heading north, the reshaping of Congolese statehood in the midst of crisis and transition, and the neo-tribal competitive order in the borderland of Egypt and Libya. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)