It's got to be difficult to cover 50+ countries in 1000 pages, and to be fair LP have a pretty good stab at it. However having just returned from a year-long, 20-country jaunt through the dark continent, this book was after a while not often consulted, as it's information was outdated or just plain wrong. We took to calling this book the 'Lonely Liar'...
Bear in mind that although it was supposedly published in 2004, from when the information was actually collected it is now 3 or 4 years out of date. Whole countries have had coups, revolutions and free elections in that time (for example Congo, which gets very little space in this book because in 2002 it was pretty dangerous).
If you want to find the hip and happening backpacker ghettoes then this book will certainly help you. You will find a large number of other hip backpackers toting the same book around, in fact you might as well go on an overland truck together because you'll be going to all the same places.
In a nutshell there are two problems with this book: 1. Africa is too big and diverse a place to be condensed into one book, and too difficult to keep such a weighty tome up to date. 2. the usual LP problem of if you follow their advice, you are just travelling from one backpacker hangout to the next, and missing out on much of what makes Africa so fantastic.