Book excerpt: Robert O. Collins is one of the most prolific authors on Africa, the Sudan, and the Nile. The Southern Sudan in Historical Perspective, based on a series of lectures he gave at Tel Aviv University, is a succinct and engaging study of the Southern Sudan, from its origins in antiquity, the British occupation of the early twentieth century, the civil disturbances of 1955, its independence in 1956, to the violence of the late 1960s and early 1970s.