Central Africa
Series in Central Africa
Books in Central Africa
Black Hawk Down
A searing portrayal of modern warfare recounts a 1993 firefight in Mogadishu, Somalia, that resulted in the deaths of eighteen Americans and more than five hundred Somalis, examining the rationales behind the disastrous raid. 75,000 first printing. Tour.
Blood River
Published to rave reviews in the United Kingdom and named a Richard & Judy Book Club selectionthe only work of nonfiction on the 2008 list Blood River is the harrowing and audacious story of Tim Butcher's journey in the Congo and his retracing of renowned explorer H. M. Stanley's famous 1874 expedition in which he mapped the Congo River. When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the legendary Congo River and the idea of re-creating Stanley's legendary journey along the three-thousand-mile waterway. Despite warnings that his plan was suicidal, Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a pygmy-rights advocate, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers. An utterly absorbing narrative that chronicles Tim Butcher's forty-four-day journey along the Congo River, Blood River is an unforgettable story of exploration and survival.
Blood River
Published to rave reviews in the United Kingdom and named a Richard & Judy Book Club selectionthe only work of nonfiction on the 2008 list Blood River is the harrowing and audacious story of Tim Butcher's journey in the Congo and his retracing of renowned explorer H. M. Stanley's famous 1874 expedition in which he mapped the Congo River. When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the legendary Congo River and the idea of re-creating Stanley's legendary journey along the three-thousand-mile waterway. Despite warnings that his plan was suicidal, Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a pygmy-rights advocate, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers. An utterly absorbing narrative that chronicles Tim Butcher's forty-four-day journey along the Congo River, Blood River is an unforgettable story of exploration and survival.
The African Adventure
The deeds of early explorers in Africa are some of the most adventurous and heroic exploits in human history. With wild animals, geographical hazards and widespread disease to contend with, it was a risky game. Such an exploration begins with African figures including Mansa Musa and the legendary Prester John, whose rich kingdom was penetrated by the Portuguese in the early 1500s. Later we meet Mungo Park, Ledyard, the American, James Bruce and René Caillié, the humble baker’s son who discovered Timbuktu, all of whom journeyed inland to avoid the Barbary coastal traders. Speke, Grant, Burton, Stanley, Livingstone, and Baker – the resourceful but feuding ‘Victorian lions’ – conclude the age of exploration, competing to unveil and evangelize Central Africa and find the source of the Nile. Skilfully matching four hundred years of history with perceptive assessments of the leading European players on the African stage, Tim Severin offers an engrossing chronicle that will take its place alongside the most distinguished writings in the field of travel and exploration. Tim Severin , author of Explorers of the Mississippi and The Golden Antilles , was educated at Oxford. He has collaborated on BBC TV programs on exploration and is a regular reviewer for the Washington Post . Born in India, he has travelled extensively throughout the world to research his books.
The Crime of the Congo
Excerpt from The Crime of the Congo There arc many of us in England who consider the crime which has been wrought in the Congo lands by King Leopold of Belgium and his followers to be the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. Personally I am strongly of that opinion. There have been great expropriations like that of the Normans in England or of the English in Ireland. There have been massacres of populations like that of the South Americans by the Spaniards or of subject nations by the Turks. But never before has there been such a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre all done under an odious guise of philanthropy and with the lowest commercial motives as a reason. It is this sordid cause and the unctious hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror. The witnesses of the crime are of all nations, and there is no possibility of error concerning facts. There are British consuls like Casement, Thesiger, Mitchell and Armstrong, all writing in their official capacity with every detail of fact and date. There are Frenchmen like Pierre Mille and Felicien Challaye, both of whom have written books upon the subject. There are missionaries of many races - Harris, Weeks and Stannard (British); Morrison, Clarke and Shepherd (American); Sjoblom (Swedish) and Father Vermeersch, the Jesuit. There is the eloquent action of the Italian Government, who refused to allow Italian officers to be employed any longer in such hangman's work, and there is the report of the Belgian commission, the evidence before which was suppressed because it was too dreadful for publication; finally, there is the incorruptible evidence of the kodak. Any American citizen who will glance at Mark Twain's "King Leopold's Soliloquy" will see some samples of that. A perusal of all of these sources of information will show that there is not a grotesque, obscene or ferocious torture which human ingenuity could invent which has not been used against…