The Explorers - Martin Dugard

During the "Golden Age" of Exploration, the blank spaces on the map were targeted for Western understanding and eventual resource extraction, it took a very specific type of person to go to these unknown places and suffer mysterious indignities. Martin Dugard's new book, The Explorers, tells the story of Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke as they hunted for the elusive source of the Nile River. Braggadocious Burton and  "celibate loner" Speke couldn't have been more different, but Dugard points out that they both shared the qualities of true explorers, which he identifies as "curiosity, hope, courage, passion, independence, self discipline, and perseverance." Dugard also tells other stories of exploration and survival in the book.