Despite the obvious enormous challenges that arise when producing a book that covers the experiences of African women from all parts of the continent and from as far back as the emergence of early human societies, Kathleen Sheldon has successfully completed this task, one that scholars have shied away from for the last couple of decades. African Women: Early History to the 21 st Century achieves a readable synthesis of the immense body of knowledge about African women that has been produced over the last several decades and provides a clear, focused narrative with cohesive analytical threads that is particularly suited to an undergraduate audience. Following in the footsteps of Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Beth Raps (co-authors of African Women: A Modern History [1997]) and Iris Berger and E. Frances White (co-authors of Women of Sub-Saharan Africa [1999]), Sheldon offers an updated text that is reflective of the current state of the field of African women's history. African Women is organized chronologically, with the first three chapters covering the long pre-colonial history of African women. The value of these chapters is that for the undergraduate reader, there are clear examples of how African women contributed to political, social, cultural, religious, and economic developments in pre-modern Africa. Sheldon is consistent in placing women at the center of the historical narrative, an important perspective to present to students. For example, in Chapter 2, which focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when an increasing European presence affected agricultural activities and expanding trade, Sheldon asserts that "women in communities along the West African coast had emerged as key figures in the growing international trade networks" and that they were "actively exporting slaves and trade items such as ivory, beeswax, animal hides, and kola nuts…iron bars, firearms, gunpowder, brandy, and glass beads" (37). Sheldon clearly highlights African women as agents of change and as dynamic, adaptive members of their societies. Chapters 4 and 5 offer a close examination of African women during the colonial period, with emphasis on the more personal as well as the public