This multi-authored book updates and adds to papers presented at a 2009 Cornell conference. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the focus of much food/poverty attention, not only because of the numbers involved (there are more undernourished people in Asia) but also because its problems seem so intractable, and likely to worsen severely with climatic change. Even though SSA's farms and banks were hardly to blame, the dual 2007–2008 crises (which were linked) hit SSA hard as a net-importing region, and undermined many of the gains of the earlier 2000s. The ‘double agony’ resulted directly from effects of high food prices, adverse financial conditions and less foreign direct investment, and indirectly from declines in export prices and revenues, private remittances (though these held up quite well) and official development assistance. The various chapters in the book cover general ‘drivers’ and trends (e.g. in SSA agricultural productivity since the 1960s, by Fuglie) and the strategies adopted by governments and poor households, along with some detailed analyses, e.g. in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda and South Africa. Most chapters end (at least) with recommendations, some more specific than others, but ranging from better statistics, through macroeconomic policies to maintain non-farm jobs, to more private and public investment in boosting agricultural productivity and infrastructure, not forgetting less unhelpful policies (e.g. for biofuels) in the developed world. The focus is on crops rather than livestock, and water and irrigation are surprisingly of low profile (no mentions in the index). But the book is an excellent compilation of data and analysis; its long-term worth will depend on the duration/recurrence of current stresses and their importance relative to other, future, shocks and pressures.