Explorers have sought the sources of the Nile River since the days of the pharaohs. This superbly illustrated, oversized book details the quests of those ancients, but concentrates more on the 19th-century efforts of men who were well known in their day: Sir Richard Francis Burton, Sir Benjamin Baker, John Hanning Speke, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingstone. Gianni Guadalupi also covers lesser-known explorers, especially generally uncelebrated Africans in the employ of Mehemet Ali, the Albanian pasha who conquered Egypt and much of the Sudan in the early 19th century. Packed with ethnographic drawings, paintings, maps, and charts, The Discovery of the Nile will fuel the dreams of those who long to undertake a latter-day Nile voyage of their own.