Looking For Livingstone

A woman, travelling alone through time, Africa, and unnamed lands, searches for Dr. David Livingstone, celebrated by the West as a "discoverer" of Africa. This book explodes Western assumptions about the "silence" of indigenous peoples.

This is the enthralling story of the extraordinarily courageous and stoical wife of the world-renowned explorer and missionary, David Livingstone. In the history books, Mary Livingstone is a shadow in the blaze of her husband's sun, a whisper in the thunderclap of his reputation. Yet she played an important role in Livingstone's success and her own feats as an early traveller in uncharted Africa are unique. She was the first white woman to cross the Kalahari, which she did twice - pregnant - giving birth in the bush on the second journey. She was much more rooted in southern Africa than her husband: he has a tomb in Westminster Abbey, London; she has an obscure and crumbling grave on the banks of the Zambezi in a destitute region of Mozambique. In the thrall of Africa, the author has travelled extensively over several years in the footsteps of Mary Livingstone, from her birthplace in a remote district of South Africa to her grave on the Zambezi. She explores the places the Livingstones knew as a couple and, above all, explores the detail of the life and family of this little-known figure in British - but not African - history.

What really happened to Dr. David Livingstone? The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Survivor: The Ultimate Game investigates in this thrilling account. 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.

Livingstone's Missionary Tales had already been a bestseller. He now wanted to outdo other explorers and find the sources of the Nile. But after 5 years of travelling he was widely assumed to be dead. At that point, Stanley turned up with his Stars and Stripes flag and a caravan of much-needed supplies. In a brilliant book Clare Pettitt tells the story of their meeting and what led up to it, and the reactions to it of contemporaries and afterwards. The 'truth' is complicated. Livingstone, the crusading missionary had often cooperated with the slave-traders. He had made only one convert and his greatest achievement of exploration - the discovery of the source of the Nile - was in fact a misidentification. It is a fascinating story of conflict and paradox taking us into the extraordinary history of British engagement with Africa...and shows both the darkest side of imperialism and the popular myth-making of the music hall jokes, the cartoons etc. This is the second title in the new Profiles in History series, edited by Mary Beard. This series explores classic moments of world history - those 'ring-a-bell' events that we always know less about than we think!

A powerful, moving, and revelatory novel set in nineteenth-century Africa--the captivating story of the loyal men and women who carried the body of explorer and missionary David Livingstone from Zambia to Zanzibar so that his remains could be returned home to England. Dawn, 1 May 1873, on the outskirts of Chitambo's village, near Lake Bangweulu in modern-day Zambia. The Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone has died. He had been heading south in the African interior on an increasingly maniacal mission to penetrate the greatest secret of Victorian exploration. He wanted to find the source of the world's longest river, the Nile. Instead, on an isolated and swampy floodplain, Dr. Livingstone found his death. How Livingstone is to be buried will be decided by his African companions, a group of sixty-nine men, women, and children. They decide that come what may, Livingstone, his papers and maps, must all be carried to England. They bury his heart and other organs under a tree and dry his flesh like jerky in the sun. Over nine months, battling severe illness and hunger, hostile chiefs and unknown terrain, all while taking a tortuous route of more than 1,000 miles to the coast to avoid marauding slave traders, they march with Livingstone's body and the evidence of his explorations. Their journey has been called "the most extraordinary story in African exploration." In this novel, their story is retold anew in the distinct, indelible voices of Livingstone's sharp-tongued female cook, Halima; a repressed, formerly enslaved African missionary named Jacob Wainwright; and the collective voice of the retainers. The result is a profound and tragic journey--an epic like no other--that encompasses all of the hypocrisy of slavery and colonization while celebrating resilience, loyalty, and love. In Out of Darkness, Shining Light, Petina Gappah has created an ambitious and artful masterpiece.

During his travels as a missionary, David Livingstone beheld many previously unknown wonders of the African interior. He put Victoria Falls and Lake Ngami on the map, and was the first white man to cross the African continent. Diaries, reports and letters are combined to create a wonderful narration of Livingstone's travels in a widely unknown continent. Included in this harrowing tale is Livingstone's narrow escape from a lion's wrath, his negotiations with an African chief, and his account of the Portuguese slave traders brutally punishing slaves after their attempt to escape. The Life and African Explorations of Livingstone also reveals Livingstone's deeply-rooted Christian beliefs and the strength he took from them, strength that allowed him to live and thrive amid the hardships of equatorial Africa.

A Story of Dr. Livingstone's Travels in Africa in search of the Source of the Nile. The Zambesi and its Tributaries were explored by this intrepid Adventurer.