The most comprehensive travel guide I've seen. Hundreds of useful practical hints, explanations of cultural background and important things to remember for "whites" in order not to hurt or offend the traditional, mythical or religious beliefs, which are all very strong over there. I have travelled in West Africa myself, before reading this book, and found that it really shows the most important details to consider. Framed boxes in the text make it easy to find the essential tips. It is also valuable, that it shows how to travel cheaply, nothing about the luxurious hotels, more of the budget type of stuff.

I would also have to agree that this book was very well written, with a great deal of relavent information on The Gambia. I highly recomend this book.

Highly recommended! We just returned from our fourth trip to Senegal, and we found the Lonely Planet guidebook to be highly accurate and easily usable. It is well written and includes much helpful cultural information in addition to all the necessary facts. Don't leave for Senegal without it!!!!

This is the most carefully and accurately written travel guide, and thus the most useful, that I have encountered in nearly four decades of traveling. It is also the most sensitive statement of The Gambia and its people I could imagine. I have been visiting the country since the mid-1970s, and was just there in early 2003. I found out that Emms and Barnett are respected wildlife experts who have taken up residence in The Gambia who advise the Gambian government, when it will listen, on matters pertaining to wildlife, ecology, and conservation. They care about The Gambia and its people. What all of this means for travelers is that they have recently visited each restaurant, hotel, and museum (and bar) they write about, driven each road, bartered for each item purchased. For every place I visited, over two months, their advice was on the money. And I would purchase the book even if not traveling, because it gives a wonderfully accurate sense of Gambian history and culture. My hat is off to Emms, Barnett, and the Bradt folks for giving us this book. Don't leave home (for The Gambia) without it.

In many cases, the coverage offered by Lonely Planet guidebooks may be hampered by the magnitude of the region they try and cover. This is why for example, in "Lonely Planet West Africa" (a bulky book which also covers Senegal and the Gambia), coverage of each single country is brief and not always perfect, and the reader is often lost among facts and information she or he does not need. Instead, in this much smaller and far more condensed guidebook, the author and editors have managed to put as much information and data as possible into it, about Senegal and the tiny Gambia. Coverage of both countries is excellent, providing up-to-date, accurate information and sensible advice, on anything from places to stay and eat, things to do and see, things to buy, and basically anything the traveller may wish to know. The coverage on culture, society, arts, music, and other information, is also excellent and wide, written in great prose and style. This is probably one of the best Lonely Planet guidebooks I have come across, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone travelling to those two countries. It will be an extremely useful tool, and will also provide great reading about the places being visited.

I recently returned from one month in Mali, where I took the 1977 Collins guide to the birds of West Africa by Serle and Morel. That book could fit in my pocket, this book by Barlow is too wide.

I am new to birdwatching and am used to the Peterson guides with big pictures and pointers to fieldmarks and many illustrations for each species . This book crams 20 or so birds on each page, and puts all the illustrations up at front. It does give a few examples of male/female/immature differences, and it does show raptors overhead. In this it is better than the Collins guide. The pictures seem cartoonish though.

The text is quite helpful and I guess the names of the birds are more up to date. I did not buy this book because I was going to Mali, not Senegal or Gambia. But all of the 60 or so birds that I identified in Mali are also found in this book. The Collins guide did not give me enough help identifying the many small weavers I saw, so I used this Barlow book and my field notes when I returned to the US, and this Barlow book is clearly superior in this case at least.

The Collins book covers all the birds of West Africa, even though nearly half get less than 10 words and no picture. Still, it has to be my first choice for countries other than Gambia and Senegal, especially since it is more portable.

The authors and illustrators do a wonderful job on a field guide of the birds of two countries that are not visited very often by birders. Clive Barlow lives in The Gambia and has been the moving force behind the creation of birding conservation efforts in that country. He is the acknowledged living expert of birds of Western Africa. He is also a first-rate field birder. Shortly after the book was published in 1998, my son and I had occasion to visit both Senegal and The Gambia. In Banjul we were most fortunate to meet Clive Barlow and go birding with him for four days. He is one of those rare individuals who has both wonderful identification skills combined with the uncanny ability to locate hard-to-find birds. His obvious love for birds is clearly evident in his handy field guide.

The book is well organized and very tastefully presented. The illustrations are superbly drawn and handy maps let you see the bird's expected range. Mr. Barlow is at his peak in the birds of The Gambia and only slightly less knowledgeable about Senegalese birding--perhaps because The Gambia is generally a much better place to observe birds.

The book is one of my favorite field guides. It is, of course, a must for anyone birding in those two countries or neighboring regions. I wish every area of the world were covered by a guide of this quality. Its creators are to be commended for a very solid, readable, useful and enjoyable field guide.

Insight's City Guides combine stunning photography with literate text and a smattering of basic travel information. The Insight Venice guide is worth adding to your bookshelf, but its practical advice is getting a bit long in the tooth and its heft makes it less than ideal as a take-along guide. - Durant Imboden, Venice for Visitors, http://govenice.miningco.co

Shady Practices not only fills a gap in gender research, it is also interesting to read. Schroeder describes the context in which he researched in detail including his personal motivation for the research, methods and ethical consideraditions. This is something far too litlle published yet useful and informative for both junior and senior researchers. Altogether the book provides a comprehensive description of the rise of female gardeners in the Gambia. Part of that description is an analysis of changing gender relations in the studied villages. It is here that the author reveals the care with which he embarked upon the project and the challenges he faced himself as a male researcher investigating the role of women in a traditionally male-oriented society. Athough the theme remains in the foreground, carefully described, the role of the author in the research and the changes he experiences himself remain present. In particular for these reasons, i.e. the honesty of the researcher and the clarity of his writing, I recommend this book for gender researchers whose interest is in the theory of gender research and those who are concerned with feminist methodologies.