Librarian Robert Miller recommends:
Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer, by Tim Jeal
This biography reads like a Dickens novel. Henry Morton Stanley ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume?") spent his childhood in the lowest possible stratum of Victorian English society--in a workhouse. From there he managed to get to America, where he fought in the Civil War and completely reinvented himself, shedding his identity as a pauper to eventually become a world famous journalist and explorer. Author Tim Jeal takes pains to counter prevailing views of Stanley as an inhumane imperialist, emphasizing Stanley's resourcefulness, courage, and vulnerability.
This well-researched, well-written biography won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Here are a couple of ways you can get the book:
- catalogUSMAI (to learn how to request books from catalogUSMAI, see our library guide)
- Amazon
