Riviting account of "Mr. Livingstone I presume"

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	• Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone Martin Dugard Broadway, 2004 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Riviting account of "Mr. Livingstone I presume"

The fact that Dugard kept me turning pages and wondering if Stanley would live to see Livingstone, is a testament to his prose. A great 'adventure story' with vivid background, scene description and character study. Dugard captures the essence of the mettle of the great explorers, creates a vivid picture of the 'safari' before land rovers, helicopters and malaria pills.

Decent Popular History

A good story, though not extraordinarilly well written. It does serve well enough as a casual introduction to the story of Stanley and Livingstone.

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Another Page-Turner by Dugard

Ever since I read "The Last Voyage of Columbus," I have been a Martin Dugard fan. In "Into Africa," Dugard does an admirable job of mixing adventure story-telling with important historical details to make this a fun, historically-compelling read. As a young child I thrilled at the adventures of Livingstone and openly wished to be like him. Now, many years later, Dugard's prose has pernitted me to relive that childhood adventure while also allowing the adult in me to savor the gritty reality of Livingstone's near-fatal treks.

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Compelling History Story

This book is way too much fun. The story is so compelling, and so much fun to read, that I am left with one complaint:

I have difficulty using this book as a research tool. It's fabulously entertaining, but the depth is hidden in the footnotes, and I am thusly forced to turn to other sources for the research that I wish to do by reading the book in the first place.

Still, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in post-Colonialism for a lively read.

A More Realistic View of African Exploration

Henry Morton Stanley, who's real name was John Rowlands- he was left at a horrible Victorian workhouse after his grandfather died (his mother having abandoned him), was a remarkable man. He certainly had his flaws, but considering his lack of family from age five, he did rise to a prominence that would certainly make a Horatio Alger book pale by comparison. By contrast the missionary David Livingston, was a crusading anti-slavery activist who became distracted by the then popular obsession- the source of the Nile. Despite his more prim upbring Livingston had his flaws, which emerge in his journals and letters. He was also a remarkable man and certainly endured (as Stanley did) hardships that should have killed him before they finally did.

This fascinating story, including many details I had never encountered in earlier books, are well recounted in "Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingston" by Martin Dugard. This is a real page-turner and a story that is not censored to make either man look better than he was. I did find several errors in fact (elephantiasis is not a form of leprosy and one GENUS of mosquitoes transmit malaria, not one species as implied by the author!) However, despite such lapses and an occasional purple passage, Dugard has written a most interesting account of the famous expedition to find Livingston. The reader will also start to realize why Africa is in its current state, what with inter-tribal warfare, Arab and other slave trading, constant raids, murder, endemic disease and colonialism, it is hard to see how anything else could have resulted. The wonder is that any African states are stable at all after their fairly recent history.

A good read and a worthwhile examination of two lives that unexpectedly intertwined.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

With the utterance of a single line??Doctor Livingstone, I presume???a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure?defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement.

In the mid-1860s, exploration had reached a plateau. The seas and continents had been mapped, the globe circumnavigated. Yet one vexing puzzle remained unsolved: what was the source of the mighty Nile river? Aiming to settle the mystery once and for all, Great Britain called upon its legendary explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, who had spent years in Africa as a missionary. In March 1866, Livingstone steered a massive expedition into the heart of Africa. In his path lay nearly impenetrable, uncharted terrain, hostile cannibals, and deadly predators. Within weeks, the explorer had vanished without a trace. Years passed with no word.

While debate raged in England over whether Livingstone could be found?or rescued?from a place as daunting as Africa, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the brash American newspaper tycoon, hatched a plan to capitalize on the world?s fascination with the missing legend. He would send a young journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, into Africa to search for Livingstone. A drifter with great ambition, but little success to show for it, Stanley undertook his assignment with gusto, filing reports that would one day captivate readers and dominate the front page of the New York Herald.

Tracing the amazing journeys of Livingstone and Stanley in alternating chapters, author Martin Dugard captures with breathtaking immediacy the perils and challenges these men faced. Woven into the narrative, Dugard tells an equally compelling story of the remarkable transformation that occurred over the course of nine years, as Stanley rose in power and prominence and Livingstone found himself alone and in mortal danger. The first book to draw on modern research and to explore the combination of adventure, politics, and larger-than-life personalities involved, Into Africa is a riveting read.

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