A largely untold story of an extraordinary historical figure, this biography sheds light on the life of William Sheppard, a 19th-century African American who, for more than 20 years, defied segregation and operated a missionary run by black Americans in the Belgian Congo. This work shows how Sheppard returned to the United States periodically, and traveled the country telling tales of his adventures to packed auditoriums. An anthropologist, photographer, big-game hunter, and art collector, the man billed as the &“Black Livingstone&” helped expose the atrocities that occurred under the reign of King Leopold, and this stirring work tells how he eventually helped to break Belgium's hold on the Congo.

This comprehensive biography of William Sheppard, the first African American Presbyterian missionary, presents the remarkable story of how an African American born in the South during the era of slavery emerged as one of the most distinguished Presbyterian leaders in American history. The book chronicles Sheppard's journey to the Congo, details his efforts to challenge human rights violations, and describes his impact on the areas of religion, human rights, education, and art.

What really happened to Dr. David Livingstone? The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Survivor: The Ultimate Game investigates in this thrilling account. With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure—defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement. In the mid-1860s, exploration had reached a plateau. The seas and continents had been mapped, the globe circumnavigated. Yet one vexing puzzle remained unsolved: what was the source of the mighty Nile river? Aiming to settle the mystery once and for all, Great Britain called upon its legendary explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, who had spent years in Africa as a missionary. In March 1866, Livingstone steered a massive expedition into the heart of Africa. In his path lay nearly impenetrable, uncharted terrain, hostile cannibals, and deadly predators. Within weeks, the explorer had vanished without a trace. Years passed with no word. While debate raged in England over whether Livingstone could be found—or rescued—from a place as daunting as Africa, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the brash American newspaper tycoon, hatched a plan to capitalize on the world’s fascination with the missing legend. He would send a young journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, into Africa to search for Livingstone. A drifter with great ambition, but little success to show for it, Stanley undertook his assignment with gusto, filing reports that would one day captivate readers and dominate the front page of the New York Herald. Tracing the amazing journeys of Livingstone and Stanley in alternating chapters, author Martin Dugard captures with breathtaking immediacy the perils and challenges these men faced. Woven into the narrative, Dugard tells an equally compelling story of the remarkable transformation that occurred over the course of nine years, as Stanley rose in power and prominence and Livingstone found himself alone and in mortal danger. The first book to draw on modern research and to explore the combination of adventure, politics, and larger-than-life personalities involved, Into Africa is a riveting read.

Drawing on films, children's books, games, songs, cartoons, and TV shows, this book reveals the many ways our culture has remembered Henry Morton Stanley's iconic phrase, while tracking the birth of an Anglo-American Christian imperialism that still sets the world agenda today.

This study about David Livingstone is different from all other publications about him. Here, Livingstone is not the main topic of interest; the focus of the author is on nutrition and health in pre-colonial Africa and Livingstone is his key informant. David Livingstone and the Myth of African Poverty and Disease is an unusual book. After a close examination of Livingstone’s writings and comparative reading of contemporary authors, Sjoerd Rijpma has been able to draw cautious conclusions about the relatively favourable conditions of health and nutrition in southern and central Africa during the pre-colonial period. His findings shed new light on the medical history of Sub-Saharan Africa. The surprise awaiting travellers in and also before 19th century Africa was that the inhabitants of the interior, even the ‘slaves’, were healthier and better fed than many of their contemporaries in Europe’s Industrial Revolution. “An impressive piece of scholarship, truly forensic in its close reading and re-reading of Livingstone’s published works and those of other travellers during the same era, clearly a labour of love which has taken years to complete” (Joanna Lewis).

Far too ignorant of the histories of the rest of the world, being aware of only the accomplishments of Greece, Rome and Europe, Westerners have been made to believe that their societies represent the most superior examples of civilization. However, the Western value system stems from a misconception that, as in nature, human society too is evolving. The idea derives from the hidden influence of secret societies, who followed the belief in spiritual evolution of the Kabbalah, which taught that history would attain its fulfillment when man would become God, and make his own laws. Therefore, the infamous Illuminati gave its name to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which claimed that human progress must abandon "superstition," meaning Christianity, in favor of "reason." Thus the Illuminati succeeded in bringing about the French and American revolutions, which instituted the separation of Church and State, and from that point forward, the Western values of Humanism, seen to include secularism, human rights, democracy and capitalism, have been celebrated as the culmination of centuries of human intellectual evolution. This is the basis of the propaganda which has been used to foster a Clash of Civilizations, where the Islamic world is presented as stubbornly adhering to the anachronistic idea of "theocracy." Where once the spread of Christianity and civilizing the world were used as pretexts for colonization, today a new White Man's Burden makes use of human rights and democracy to justify imperial aggression. However, because, after centuries of decline, the Islamic world is incapable of mobilizing a defense, the Western powers, as part of their age-old strategy of Divide and Conquer, have fostered the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, to both serve as agent-provocateurs and to malign the image of Islam. These sects, known to scholars as Revivalists, opposed the traditions of classical Islamic scholarship in order to create the opportunity to rewrite the laws of the religion to better serve their sponsors. Thus were created the Wahhabi and Salafi sects of Islam, from which were derived the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been in the service of the West ever since. But, the story of the development of these Islamic sects involves the bizarre doctrines and hidden networks of occult secret societies, being based on a Rosicrucian myth of Egyptian Freemasonry, which see the Muslim radicals as inheritors of an ancient mystery tradition of the Middle East which was passed on to the Knights Templar during the Crusades, thus forming the foundation of the legends of the Holy Grail. These beliefs would not only form the cause for the association of Western intelligence agencies with Islamic fundamentalists, but would fundamentally shape much of twentieth century history.

During his travels as a missionary, David Livingstone beheld many previously unknown wonders of the African interior. He put Victoria Falls and Lake Ngami on the map, and was the first white man to cross the African continent. Diaries, reports and letters are combined to create a wonderful narration of Livingstone's travels in a widely unknown continent. Included in this harrowing tale is Livingstone's narrow escape from a lion's wrath, his negotiations with an African chief, and his account of the Portuguese slave traders brutally punishing slaves after their attempt to escape. The Life and African Explorations of Livingstone also reveals Livingstone's deeply-rooted Christian beliefs and the strength he took from them, strength that allowed him to live and thrive amid the hardships of equatorial Africa.

Four ex-lovers/current bandmates jam together amidst today's cutting-edge music scene, in this fresh, funky novel of love lost and fame gained by the celebrated author of "Spinsters".

David Livingstone, the ‘missionary-explorer’, has attracted more commentary than nearly any other Victorian hero. Beginning in the years following his death, he soon became the subject of a major biographical tradition. Yet out of this extensive discourse, no unified image of Livingstone emerges. Rather, he has been represented in diverse ways and in a variety of socio-political contexts. Until now, no one has explored Livingstone’s posthumous reputation in full. This book meets the challenge. In approaching Livingstone’s complex legacy, it adopts a metabiographical perspective: in other words, this book is a biography of biographies. Rather than trying to uncover the true nature of the subject, metabiography is concerned with the malleability of biographical representation. It does not aim to uncover Livingstone’s ‘real’ identity, but instead asks: what has he been made to mean? Crossing disciplinary boundaries, Livingstone’s 'lives' will interest scholars of imperial history, postcolonialism, life-writing, travel-writing and Victorian studies.