Stanley: Africa'S Greatest Explorer - Tapa dura

Críticas

Tim Jeal has fulfilled a mission to rehabilitate one of the most complex heroes of Victorian Britain ... The real power of this compelling biography is not only that it allows us vividly to imagine the enormity of Stanley's experience, but to recognise what courage it took, and what confronts us still. (Tim Gardam Observer )

Tim Jeal delivers a remarkable reassessment, one that will send shivers through historians and writers on Africa ... [his] book is a stunning and provocative work, an awesome piece of scholarship executed with page-turning brio. (Kevin Rushby Guardian )

A powerful and meticulously researched biography ... Assisted by a treasure trove of previously inaccessible letters and diaries, Tim Jeal presents the most cogent argument for years in favour of a radical reassessment of the Welsh-born American bastard ... this magnificent book is a stirring riposte to his many critics and a blow struck for a more distinguished posterity. (Justin Marozzi Evening Standard )

[An] exciting and extraordinary tale (Ann Wroe Daily Telegraph )

Impressively researched ... Despite his essential humanitarian impulses [Stanley] has been made "a scapegoat for the post-colonial guilt of successive generations". Jeal rescues him from this burden and presents him in the round as a man who was courageous and determined, with an "unearthly quality" about him, but also decent and tender-hearted. (Christopher Silvester Daily Express )

Superb ... Tim Jeal's absorbing biography will surely be definitive. The story of how an emotionally damaged Victorian pauper opened up the Dark Continent is an extraordinary one, and Jeal has written a great book - shrewd, perceptive and engaging. (Jane Ridley Sunday Telegraph )

Tim Jeal's book is not just an absorbing, sometimes horrifying biography but a feat of advocacy - an ardent, intricate defence of a man history has damned. (John Carey Sunday Times )

[A] wonderful story, almost epic in scope (Sara Wheeler The Times )

A masterly biography ... Jeal handles each of the great expeditions with a panache and momentousness worthy of Kipling or Conrad (Jonathan Keates The First Post )

Jeal is a biographer as fearless in his genre as Stanley in the jungle ... This is a page-turner. Jeal is a compelling storyteller, and his prose sweeps the reader along on a river of revelations, some speculative but all informed by rigorous research. (Julie Davidson Sunday Herald (Glasgow) )

Reseña del editor

The tragic life of the most brilliant adventurer in the great age of exploration.

Henry Morton Stanley was a cruel imperialist - a bad man of Africa - who connived with King Leopold II of Belgium in horrific crimes against the people of the Congo. He also conducted the most legendary celebrity interview in history, remembered in the words 'Dr Livingstone, I Presume?'

Or so we think: but as Tim Jeal brilliantly shows, none of these perceptions is quite true. The reality of Stanley's life - even by the exceptional standards of the Victorian age - is yet more extraordinary. Rejected by both parents at birth and consigned to a Welsh workhouse, he emigrated to America, fought in the Civil War - on both sides - before becoming a journalist and then explorer.

Few people know of his dazzling trans-Africa journey, which solved virtually every one of the continent's remaining geographical puzzles. His journey down the Congo to the Atlantic is a heart-breaking epic of human endurance. It alone qualifies him as Africa's greatest explorer.

Now, abundant new documentary evidence allows Jeal to show just how misunderstood Stanley's life has been. In doing so, he also provides a timely re-examination of post-colonial guilt, new insights into African history, and a fresh understanding of the nature of exploration. Few biographies can claim so thoroughly to reappraise a reputation, or to be as moving, or as truly majestic.