Rotberg traces how colonial rule was undone across southern Africa, first in the northern territories and then in the settler strongholds that became Zimbabwe and, last, South Africa. Country by country, the chapters follow routes to independence that were rarely straight, taking in the failure of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and the eventual end of apartheid.

More than half the book asks what the new states did with the freedom they had won. Several, Rotberg argues, dismantled democratic protections soon after independence, hardened into one-party rule, closed their economies, curtailed rights and liberties, and traded growth for central planning and sheltered domestic industry. Corruption spread nearly everywhere. Botswana is the exception he singles out for democratic practice and sound government.

Later chapters turn to the present, where much of the region is working its way back, unevenly, toward the standards of honest administration it once let go. Rotberg reads that recovery as a resurgence worth marking.