This study avoids the well-worn generalizations now inherent in this increasingly common comparison, but the author's approach-through an intensive focus first on the Mozambican transition to independence and then on Tanzania's nationalization of banks-ends up juggling apples and oranges. With or without its Marxist framework, his argument about socialist transitions does not get by the most basic difference between the two countries: Mozambique forged its political dispensation in its war for independence, while Tanzanian socialism emanated from the mind of President Julius Nyerere.