The White Nile

"Because it’s fun, rollicking and, at times, hilarious – it’s a wonderful read. It is the prose of someone who was educated before Marxism entered the campuses and before any whiff of political correctness existed. It has no influence on him, and the book takes some heat for that. But both the The White Nile and its companion, The Blue Nile , have the best qualities of history. Moorehead read everything and he boiled it down in a way that is fun and good to read. He’s not a cheerleader for various explorers and their conquests. He takes Burton to task for his racism. He doesn’t understand Burton’s absolute lack of empathy for the black Africans. Burton’s natural affinity was for the Arab slavers he encountered in the bush, and he couldn’t make the connection between the actions of these slave traders and the abject state of the tribes they plundered. The White Nile is about the quest for the source of the White Nile, which runs from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean. The book also follows the rise of the Mahdi in Sudan and his movement’s defeat by Lord Kitchener, and the consolidation of British control over the Nile valley."