One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley

New York: Alfred A Knopf Inc, 1990. First US Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7. Type: Hardback First Edition. Hardcover Book in NEAR FINE Condition. No Jacket. Green quarter cloth w/gilt titles, tan paper-wrapped boards; very clean nd unmarked, spine lightly sunned. Interior is in Fine Condition--very clean pages, completely unmarked. Caroline Alexander set out to explore the equatorial African country of Gabon, retracing the steps of the journey made in 1895 by Mary Kingsley, author of the classic "Travels in West Africa". She made her way deep into the interior, through the same mud-hut villages, the same streches of water-ways, rain forests, and empty savannah, before breaking into new territory that had been virtually unreachable a century before. Contact with the past gave way to experiences that might have amazed even Miss Kingsley: side-trips directed-or misdirected- by 'expert' guides; adventuress and misadventures with the Gabonese and the expatriates living among them; and a visit to the majestic Chief Josephine. An enthralling account, in which Alexander illuminates the differences between the experiences of the earlier visitors and her own, differences that speak of the gains losses of a century of haphazard modernization. 290 pages. 8.5 x 5.8 inches. Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1990.