Long neglected by historians, in comparison to the attention paid to its southern neighbour Buganda, Bunyoro is deserving of sustained scholarly interest, if not of the improbable sum recently claimed as compensation for the abuse suffered at the hands of the British. Yet while Cedric Pulford is to be commended for identifying the kingdom as worthy of closer examination, this odd little book makes a minimal contribution to our understanding of Bunyoro either then or now. It is a strangely rambling, jumbled version of the region's history – the nineteenth century as well as the colonial period – and is written in a style that might well appeal to a non-specialist but that otherwise is sometimes simplistic to the point of inanity. At the outset, the author asserts that ‘[w]hatever the truth about the [British] empire as a whole, Bunyoro … drew a short straw … This book explains how and why’ (p. 1). It does neither particularly well, although the sense that Bunyoro did indeed suffer under colonial rule by comparison with Buganda is adequately conveyed – it is difficult to see how it could not be. The narrative also bounces blithely along, unencumbered by nuance and untroubled by complexity; in this sense the book represents perhaps a couple of short commutes, or a slightly delayed sojourn in an airport. The enterprise might have been rather more convincing were it not for the author's tendency to switch topics entirely and use the flimsiest of excuses to hold forth on some present-day issue or other with which he is evidently preoccupied. In this way the issues of Muslims wearing veils in modern Britain, the evangelism of present-day Ugandan Christianity, and the nastiness of the Lord's Resistance Army suddenly appear in a book which at times appears to be only marginally concerned with the British in Bunyoro. A stronger editorial hand was needed; but the author is also somewhat incautious in choosing to critique Shane Doyle's recent work, Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro (Oxford, 2006). This was inadvisable, as Pulford's lightweight offering is in no shape or form comparable to Doyle's scholarship. The cover blurb suggests that this book ‘is for readers who enjoy fast-paced history’. This reviewer is all for it. But sadly, in this case, speed comes at a price: substance.