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Candice Millard is a former writer and editor for National Geographic magazine. Millard's first book, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, was a New York Times bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by a number of publications including the New York Times, mostra altro Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Christian Science Monitor. The River of Doubt was also a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Book Sense Pick, was a finalist for the Quill Awards, and won the William Rockhill Nelson Award. Millard's second book, The Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President, was released in September 2011. Millard's book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill, made the New York Times Bestseller list in 2016. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno

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Love Teddy Roosevelt. Love exploration tales in the amazon. Love books laced with Natural History. This book was a great read , though it left me abit saddened at the end, it was partly because such an interesting trip was over
 
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cspiwak | 140 altre recensioni | Mar 6, 2024 |
An interesting read. It’s hard nowadays to write about explorers and Burton is certainly no angel. I think Millard did a good job of acknowledging some of his issues while at the same time showing his admirable and tragic sides. She also gave some attention to a neglected African member of the expedition. It would have been nice to have more on him, but I imagine there is just not that much out there.
 
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cspiwak | 20 altre recensioni | Mar 6, 2024 |
Years ago I thoroughly enjoyed Millard's [River of Doubt], about Theodore Roosevelt's journey on the Amazon, so I thought this would be another interesting narrative history, this time focusing on the Nile. And in many ways the book delivers. Richard Burton is as fascinating a man of his times as Roosevelt, and the expeditions he and John Speke undertake in 1856-1863 are fraught with danger, illness, and disasters that kept me turning the pages. The highlight of the book, IMO, was their guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was stolen from his village as a child, sold for a bolt of cloth by Arab traders, and was enslaved in Western India for twenty years. Once freed, he returned to Africa and became one of the most travelled men on the continent and a highly regarded guide (including Stanley's trip to find the lost Dr. Livingstone).

My issues with the book stem from the author's almost giddy hero-worship of Burton, an interesting man (anyone who speaks 25 languages and 10 dialects interests me), but a deeply flawed one as well. Millard is so busy defending Burton from Speke's accusations that I didn't feel as though Burton was viewed objectively. Millard attempts to shed a bit of light on the way European explorers exploited the natives who did most of the work and whose own maps and geographies were discounted, but it's still a book about the Europeans. I don't know what I was expecting, but I closed the book knowing more about the area and the principals involved, yet disappointed. Perhaps it's impossible to read a book about nineteenth-century European explorers without being disappointed.
… (altro)
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labfs39 | 20 altre recensioni | Feb 12, 2024 |
In my view Millard deserves a five for sticking with her chosen subject, Sir Richard Burton, given credit for finding the source of the Nile (although he really didn't). Although Burton, clearly, had extraordinary abilities: strength, determination, great intelligence, a linguistic gift I found myself unable to grasp the whole man. His choices often feel so impulsive, his marriage to a rabidly religious Catholic and his endurance of Speke, a person I found repellant from the get-go (I'm guessing, from the description, a borderline) as his travel partner. The contrast between the man who could meticulously plan infiltrating Mecca with his choices of close companions boggles. I'm even finding writing about the contradictions in his choices and actions difficult to comprehend. Was it the fetters of Victorian life? Was it a naivete about people that blinded him? Some sort of empathy--he saw their neediness and thought he could manage them? Was it ego? All of the above? Millard mostly outlines the facts and does not spend much (any?) time speculating about the motivations and inner lives of any of the cast of characters that make up this story. I read it for one of my book groups and never would have endured to the end if not for that. If your interest is in Victorians, exploration, descriptions of horrendous experiences and ailments, you'll love it. I did not, but Millard writes well and worked hard. She also gives space to the one decent person -- a former slave, Bombay, the guide for many travelers in that region during that era in the mid-1800's. ***1/2… (altro)
½
 
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sibylline | 20 altre recensioni | Feb 8, 2024 |

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