Amazon.com description: Product Description: When John Young first noticed Edwin Smith 25 years ago he soon realized that Smith was a very remarkable person. This book, the fruit of several years of research, describes how Smith's increasingly respectful attitude to Africa and Africans was expressed practically and in many scholarly and popular writings. After 40 years of obscurity Smith is being noticed again by scholars. In his foreword, Cracknell points out that this book should interest several categories of reader: Methodists and other Christians should see one who brought them honour; Missiologists should notice Smith's early affirmation of African ideas and cultures; while the wider academic community - especially anthropologists and Africanists - should find much of interest in the work of one who was highly respected by their forebears.