Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure - Hardcover

Jeal, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300149352 ISBN 13: 9780300149357

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Nothing obsessed explorers of the mid-nineteenth century more than the quest to discover the source of the White Nile. It was the planet's most elusive secret, the prize coveted above all others. Between 1856 and 1876, six larger-than-life men and one extraordinary woman accepted the challenge. Showing extreme courage and resilience, Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, James Augustus Grant, Samuel Baker, Florence von Sass, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley risked their lives and reputations in the fierce competition. Award-winning author Tim Jeal deploys fascinating new research to provide a vivid tableau of the unmapped "Dark Continent," its jungle deprivations, and the courage—as well as malicious tactics—of the explorers.

On multiple forays launched into east and central Africa, the travelers passed through almost impenetrable terrain and suffered the ravages of flesh-eating ulcers, paralysis, malaria, deep spear wounds, and even death. They discovered Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria and became the first white people to encounter the kingdoms of Buganda and Bunyoro. Jeal weaves the story with authentic new detail and examines the tragic unintended legacy of the Nile search that still casts a long shadow over the people of Uganda and Sudan.

About this title

From the Author:

Praise for Tim Jeal’s Stanley, winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

"A magnificent new life. . . . There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal's is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable and exhaustive, profiting from his access to an immense new trove of Stanley material."—Paul Theroux, front page, New York Times Book Review
"[An] impressive, revealing, and well written biography. . . . Tim Jeal has had both the good fortune to see [Stanley's] papers and the skill to construct a new interpretation around them. He recognizes Stanley's feats and views them in the context of his age rather than ours. Moreover, he adds new layers to his subject's character."—David Gilmour, New York Review of Books

"[T]his commanding, definitive biography . . . is an unalloyed triumph."—Jason Roberts, Washington Post Book World

“Sympathetic yet balanced, perceptive and full of perspective, this is biography at its best.”—Ross Leckie, The Times London

Named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by the New York Times Book Review

Selected as one of the best books of 2008 by the Washington Post

Nominated for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography

About the Author:

Tim Jeal is also the biographer of Henry Morton Stanley (National Book Critics' Circle Award in Biography and Sunday Times Biography of the Year 2007), and Robert Baden-Powell, which (like Livingstone) was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and the Washington Post. In 2011 his Explorers of the Nile was a New York Times Editor's Choice and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0300149352
• ISBN 13: 9780300149357
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528