Camping with the Prince [Mass Market Paperback]

Thomas A. Bass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995

The real-life adventure story of a two-year journey across Africa, from Timbuktu to the Zambezi River, revealing an Africa unknown to most Westerners. Whenever possible, the author travelled with scientists as he found they knew the most about the country.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For two years, Bass traveled with scientific expeditions in Africa, witnessing new developments that include a famine early-warning system, crop cycles to keep the land productive and a Kenyan pest-control center. PW called this "a gripping account of health and environmental issues that are unique to Africa; there is a sardonic piece on official visitors and what they are shown."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

From 1985 to 1987, Bass explored sub-Saharan Africa by observing and assisting African and Western scientists involved in research ranging from paleontology to tropical viruses, famine economics, and the sex life of cichlid fish. Bass found that most Western-style development projects have caused more harm than good in this region. However, he met Kenyan and Nigerian scientists (including a virologist son of a Nigerian chief, the "prince" of the title) who are attempting to foster an African scientific community and philosophy of science. This offers hope for eventual independence from Western aid. Bass explains many complex issues and ideas in science and current affairs. The book also works as insightful travel literature. Recommended for academic and public libraries.
- Beth Clewis, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community Coll. Lib., Richmond, Va.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140148701
• ISBN-13: 978-0140148701
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,271,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating, upbeat look at contemporary African science., August 14, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Camping With the Prince and Other Tales of Science in Africa (Hardcover)

Camping With the Prince, a 1990 book by the science journalist Thomas Bass, is a rare find and highly recommended.

Most books on contemporary Africa are gloomy and angry. Some are hostile towards Africans, some towards Westerners, some towards both. Camping With the Prince is neither. Instead it is a fascinating look at things which are going right.

Bass deserves praise for that alone. But his topics are fascinating in their own right. In seven chapters, Bass investigates seven areas of scientific research in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa. They range from sustainable forestry in Mali, to the response of nomad communities in Kenya to food shortages, Nigerian research on insect pests and virology, and on to paleoanthropology and the mating habits of the multicolored cichlid fish of Lake Malawi.

To the extent there are villains in this book, they are international specialists in foreign aid, who have spent forty years delivering bad advice on agricultural policy and building dams that spread the guinea worm. But in fact the villains are very few. Much more common are people like Thomas Risley Odhiambo, a Kenyan entomologist who founded the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, which carries out world-class research on low-impact pest controls.

Bass asks Dr. Odhiambo how Kenya -- and by extension Africa generally -- can afford such a program when many Kenyans have no potable drinking water. Odhiambo makes an equally obvious reply:

'"My own feeling is that we have to run on twin tracks," he says. "We have the longer-range problems that depend on science and technology. We must solve them. At the same time we must tackle these problems arising from urbanization and dislocation from the land. If we take only one track and not the other, we will be in worse trouble, because we will have no future in terms of strategies for the long run."

Odhiambo's realistic but hopeful attitude -- a recognition of contemporary problems, coupled with the faith that Africa can overcome and transcend them -- is typical of the people Bass meets. They are Africans like Odhiambo and the Nigerian virologist Oyewale Tomori, Westerners like Jeremy Swift, an Englishman who has spent fifteen years living among nomads in the dry savannas, and even East Asians like Odhiambo's Chinese colleague Lu Qing Guang, who conducts research on insects like the trichogramma wasp which prey on common pests.

The book has one minor flaw, in that it presents readers with seven more or less independent chapters rather than a coherent narrative. Bass also demands some effort from the reader, as his book addresses complex scientific issues without condescension. Those who will be put off by discussions of nematodes, Lorenzian biological aggression theory or the life cycle of the tsetse fly will find parts of the book pretty dense. But most readers who take up a book like this will view technical detail a strength rather than a weakness.

And altogether, Camping With the Prince is a well-written, welcome respite from the bleak tone of most writing on modern Africa. Bass has done a fine job and deserves readers.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real Science, as Adventure, Beautifully Communicated, December 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Camping With the Prince (Paperback)

This is a book for people that think scientists walk around in white coats spouting equations at each other and relating dysfunctionaly to the rest of the world. Learn about science as a way of life, a way of seeing the world and accepting its challenges. Yes, Africa is somewhat of a mess, but as Africa goes, so may go the planet. Tom Bass brings you beautifully into this chaos and gives you the flavor of life with scientists who have let it all hang out, put it all on the line, in their fascination with and commitment to an important way of looking at the world. It's a new genre: Guerilla Science.

5.0 out of 5 stars Camping With the Prince and Other Tales of Science in Africa, May 14, 2007

By 

Holly J. Gordon - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Camping With the Prince (Paperback)

This is a great book-exciting, exotic and fascinating as Bass profiles different scientific and social scientific researchers' projects in Africa. One gets a feel for the different cultures and ecosystems viewed through the lens of his portraits.