"Africa is Many Things"—and these stories, most of them gathered by Harold Courlander and George Herzog on expeditions to Western Africa, are themselves many things, for there is quick humor in the story called "Talk", and irony, for instance, in "Guinea Fowl and Rabbit Get Justice". Why children "cry for nothing" and how debt came to the tribe are true folk tales. "The Cow-Tail Switch" is one of many stories which reveal incidentally many of the customs and ways of thought of the West African people. Children will love the humor and the fantasy; adults will appreciate the philosophy, the subtle thrusts at human foibles; storytellers will find a rich source of material in the rhythm of true storytelling.

From the dust jacket of the 1986 edition