Landlocked Malawi is a poor agrarian Central African state stretching west along the elongated lake of the same name. The country first came to global prominence because of the explorations and anti-slavery pleas of Dr Livingstone, and once again in the 1950s, when Nyasaland, as it then was, refused to be merged by Britain with the two Rhodesias in the Central African Federation. Dr Hastings Banda led the nationalist movement, a campaign of civil disobedience that forged a nation and finally gained the fragile country independence as Malawi. Professor Decalo lists the most pertinent and recent books and articles on Malawi, and briefly refers the reader to an additional 250 works.