Jungle of classic exploration

The gripping narrative of Henry Morton Stanley’s search across Africa for David Livingstone is the granddaddy of exploration sagas, suspensefully retold here by Dugard in pulse-pounding, stomach-churning detail. The tale is best known for the line attributed to American journalist Stanley as he greeted Livingstone, a missionary and British national hero who had spent 20 years alone charting the African interior in search of the headwaters of the Nile: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” But there was much more to the story than this early sound bite.

Dugard depicts an Africa suffused with beauty and terror. Animals carnivorous and prehistoric, monsoon floods, waterless wastelands, Arab slavers, warring cannibal tribes, armies of biting insects, starvation, desertions and mysterious diseases all plagued Stanley in 1871 as he pressed deep into the dark continent, obsessed with finding Livingstone, who had become an international symbol of the greatness awaiting ordinary men willing to “push beyond the limits of comfort and fear.”

It’s a riveting, solidly researched tale that will catapult you out of your comfort zone.

-- Susan Dworski