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"Kemper’s majestic account of Barth’s journey restores the reputation of an explorer who was as passionate about science as he was about rigorous travel. It’s an enthralling adventure, captivatingly told." —Ziauddin Sardar, Times (London) In 1840 Heinrich Barth joined a small British expedition into unexplored regions of Islamic North and Central Africa. One by one his companions died, but he carried on alone, eventually reaching the fabled city of gold, Timbuktu. His five-and-a-half-year, 10,000-mile trek ranks among the greatest journeys in the annals of exploration, and his discoveries are considered indispensable by modern scholars of Africa. In this historical adventure, the first book about Barth in English, Kemper goes a long way toward rescuing this fascinating figure from obscurity.
Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.
An informative, fascinating resource suitable for students, researchers, and general readers, this biographical dictionary is a "who was who" of world and space explorers, giving readers a sense of the human drama—the achievements and the challenges—that those who go where few or none have gone before must face. The explorers covered include Jacques Cousteau, Sir Vivian Fuchs, John Glenn Jr., Aleksei Leonov, Annie Peck, Valentina Tereshkova, and many more.
‘An exemplary work of investigative journalism that is also a wonderfully colourful book of history and travel’ Observer, Books of the Year ‘A piece of postmodern historiography of quite extraordinary sophistication and ingenuity... [written with] exceptional delicacy and restraint’ TLS
Starting eight million years ago, Understanding Africa provides an accurate and detailed account of the natural, political and social forces that have created the Africa we know of today and which have shaped the continent’s destiny through the ages In 2001, Tony Blair, the then British Prime Minister, described Africa as “a scar on the conscience of the world”. Yet there is not one ‘Africa’. North Africa, West Africa, East Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, for example, are quite different both geographically and culturally. The histories of these diverse regions, though sometimes intertwined, are different too. And Africa has a rich and compelling history filled with impressive civilisations, great leaders and powerful kingdoms.
The challenge of opening Africa and Australia to British imperial influence fell to a coterie of proto-professional explorers who sought knowledge, adventure, and fame but often experienced confusion, fear, and failure. The Last Blank Spaces follows the arc of these explorations, from idea to practice, intention to outcome, myth to reality.
First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
This book examines and compares the religious experience of an African group with a European one. It offers an ethnographical investigation of the Jukun of north central Nigeria. The author also organically weaves into the narrative the Christianization of the Irish in a comparative fashion. Throughout, he makes the case for an African Christianity connected to a Celtic Irish Christianity and vice-versa -- as different threads in a tapestry. This work is a product of a synthesis of archival research in three continents, interviews with surviving first-generation Christians who were active practitioners of the Jukun indigenous religion, and with former missionaries to the Jukun. On the Irish ...