Kenya's white settlers have long captivated observers. They are alternately celebrated and condemned, painted as romantic pioneers, hedonistic bed-hoppers or crude racists. However, if we wish to better understand Kenya's tortured history, we must examine settlers not as caricatures, but as people inhabiting a unique historical moment.
The souls of white folk offers a striking new interpretation of white settlement in early colonial Kenya by interrogating settlers' lives. It takes seriously - though not uncritically - what settlers said, how they viewed themselves and their world. It...