Daniel Jordan Smith presents an exceptional work full of insight and appreciation of Nigerian culture. The content is enriched by his years spent working there, his marriage to a Nigerian woman and his obvious affinity with the Nigerian people. Smith's main aim is to reflect on popular Nigerian sentiment towards corruption, but also to explore how entrenched corrupt practices have become in society. The book focuses on two main elements; how Nigeria is as much a “culture of corruption” as “against corruption” (p. 6). The standard narrative that exists among Nigerians themselves as well as the rest of the world is that Nigeria has a history of debilitating corruption. Smith's work is therefore aimed at varied audiences. The portrayal of this corruption in the media is fundamentally flawed; primarily because the roots of the term come from a Western conceptualization that has for too long been misapplied, thereby preserving stereotypes and generalizations. To counter this portrayal of Nigerians, Smith gives a delicate account of the complicated system they must navigate every day. He uses a significant amount of stories, anecdotes and interviews from his time in Nigeria, which creates a narrative that is accessible to the reader. Chapters one through five present different forms of corruption at all levels of society, with the remaining two chapters focusing on radical social issues. attempts to combat corruption such as vigilante justice. The famous email scam is the first introduction to corruption – the common expression for it being 419, coming from its reference to fraud in the Nigerian penal code. 419 evolved to mean any corrupt activity in society; to communi...... middle of paper ...... change for the better. The future is something left to the reader's imagination. Another missing feature was greater interaction between Smith's insightful studies and other publications in the field. For someone unfamiliar with corruption in Nigeria, this was a fantastic introduction to its concepts, but it also meant that readers were unclear where Smith's arguments about Nigeria's culture of corruption fit. in the rest of the academic literature. Despite this, overall Smith managed to create a thought-provoking and educational read. Works cited Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre. 1999. A moral economy of corruption in Africa? Journal of Modern African Studies 37 (1): 25-52. Smith, Daniel J. 2008. A culture of corruption: everyday deception and popular discontent in Nigeria. Princeton University Press, New Jersey.