[T]his painstakingly researched biography makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of an important historical period. Historians of astronomy will especially appreciate Snedegar's summation of Roberts's research methods and his correspondence with other (perhaps less starry-eyed) stargazers. * Isis * In this biographical study, historian of science Keith Snedegar reassesses a neglected historical figure, the astronomer, missionary educator, and politician Alexander W. Roberts. . . .[T]he text draws on a wide range of published and archival sources housed in the United Kingdom, United States, South Africa, Australia, and the Netherlands. . . .Mission, Science and Race in South Africa is a history of paths not taken in the history of South Africa and the Anglophone Atlantic. It is a unique intellectual history of the emergence of modern South Africa, from the perspective of a man who was ill-suited to participate in its cultural and ideological shifts. * African Studies Quarterly * Most books on the history of mission education in South Africa mention Alexander William Roberts only in passing or in a footnote. Keith Snedegar, Professor of World History at Utah Valley University, has taken the trouble to study the rich material contained in Roberts's papers besides that in an impressive number of other collections, and to reconstruct his life's story. . . . Snedegar does not hide his critical attitude and provides a portrait that shows Roberts's weaknesses and limitations. His study is a welcome addition to the complex history of South Africa liberalism, but at least as much a contribution to the history of education and the historiography of knowledge and science. * Journal of Ecclesiastical History * Snedegar's study is a tour de force of research into the political and scientific background of the South Africa in which Roberts lived and made his mark. For my own part I found it hard to put down, opening as it did for me many aspects of the scientific and political life that prevailed a century ago. -- Ian S. Glass, South African Astronomical Observatory In this judicious, enlightening, and well-researched book the work of Alexander W. Roberts, amateur Scottish missionary, educationist, astronomer, and 'native expert', is recovered and brought to life; through Roberts, we are launched into the closely intersecting worlds of politics, science, and culture in the formative period of the first 'new' South Africa. -- Saul Dubow, Queen Mary University of London A compelling biography of a complex man in a complex time. With verve and authority, Snedegar recounts A.W. Roberts' life as a missionary teacher and liberal activist in South Africa's racial policies, while also expounding, most accessibly, Roberts' work as a talented but non-professional astronomer. Both as an activist and a scientist Roberts met with grave disappointments. But his long struggles, in Snedegar's able hands, abound with insights into the political and intellectual life of a strife-ridden colony in the declining years of the British Empire. -- Richard Elphick, author of The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa