This story did not need to be told. Horrible white men go out to “discover” something that is already known. They ignored the knowledge of people native to the area they were infiltrating, and if they did utilize the expertise of native people, those people of course went unrecognized in the “discovery”. At the end, the author (in a few short paragraphs), notes what a shame it is that the African guides got no recognition and “no biographies were ever written about them”, yet she too chose to write about Burton and Speke rather than them??? There is no valuable information to be gained from reading this book if you’re even remotely intelligent and already understand the evils of colonization and “exploration”. I was waiting for at least some kind of underlying emotional or human message to justify this book, but there is none.