The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold
by Kryza, Frank T
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0060560649
- ISBN 13
- 9780060560645
- Seller
-
Santa Barbara, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Ecco Press, 2006. xxv, 322 pages, illustrations, maps; 24 cm. Tight, clean copy. Remainder mark/tail edge. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket with light shelfwear. Another copy available. "In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers - and fortune hunters - than the lost city of Timbuktu. Africa's legendary City of Gold, not visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages, held the promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale. Unwilling to trust in the slender chances of a lone explorer, the British sent several on their way. One of the contenders was Major Alexander Gordon Laing, a thirty-year-old army officer. Handsome and confident, Laing was convinced that Timbuktu was his destiny, and his ticket to glory. In July 1825, after a whirlwind romance with Emma Warrington, daughter of the British consul at Tripoli, Laing left the Mediterranean coast to cross the Sahara. His 2,000-mile journey took on an added urgency when Hugh Clapperton, a more experienced explorer, set out to beat him. Apprised of each other's mission by overseers in London who hoped the two would cooperate, Clapperton instead became Laing's rival, spurring him on across a hostile wilderness. Drawing on Laing's dynamic correspondence, including passionate letters to his beloved Emma and gossip-laden official reports, The Race for Timbuktu follows Laing's arduous trek across an unforgiving Sahara, battling unpredictable elements, crippling illness, vicious attacks - and the clock - to be the first white man in centuries to reach the gates of Timbuktu. In bringing Laing's dramatic story to life, Frank T. Kryza also provides a narrative history of the first phase of the colonization of Africa, which in less than a century would see nearly every square mile of the continent occupied by the nations of Europe. The Race for Timbuktu offers a close, personal look at the extraordinary people and pivotal events of nineteenth-century African exploration that changed the course of history and the shape of the modern world." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo.
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Details
- Bookseller
- LEFT COAST BOOKS (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 109948
- Title
- The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold
- Author
- Kryza, Frank T
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Edition
- 1st
- ISBN 10
- 0060560649
- ISBN 13
- 9780060560645
- Publisher
- Ecco Press
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2006
- Size
- 8vo
- Bookseller catalogs
- Architecture / Urbanism, Cities & City Planning; African / Modern & Contemporary Art; Media / Metalwork;
Terms of Sale
LEFT COAST BOOKS
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
LEFT COAST BOOKS
Biblio member since 2016
Santa Barbara, California
About LEFT COAST BOOKS
Established in Santa Barbara, California, in 2004, Left Coast Books specializes in ART BOOKS, offering thousands of titles on painting, sculpture, graphic arts, architecture, design, photography, film, video, and performance art. We also sell classics, literature, history, and a broad variety of useful academic books.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Shelfwear
- Minor wear resulting from a book being place on, and taken from a bookshelf, especially along the bottom edge.
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Remainder
- Book(s) which are sold at a very deep discount to alleviate publisher overstock. Often, though not always, they have a remainder...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...