“For 160 Days We Marched Through The Forest”
“Only a man of Stanley’s iron resolution and invincible resource could have carried through the awful marches and counter-marches in the tropical forests…” (DNB).
Stanley had already successfully completed three major expeditions in Africa by the time he accepted what would prove to be his most ambitious and most dangerous attempt. An Austrian convert to Islam, Emin Pasha had been appointed by English General Charles Gordon as governor of the southernmost province of the Sudan. After the Islamic fundamentalist armies of El Mahdi expelled all Europeans and Egyptians from the Sudan and killed General Gordon at Khartoum, it was learned that Emin Pasha still held out, surrounded on all sides and cut off from civilization.
Stanley organized an elaborate rescue force of 650 men who traveled up the Congo and then overland through the dense Ituri forest. After enduring harrowing hardships and devastating losses of men and supplies, Stanley reached Emin in April 1888—only to discover that he was quite content and refused to be rescued. Ultimately Stanley insisted, carrying the reluctant leader and many of his followers to the east coast, thereby becoming the first to cross the width of Africa from coast to coast in both directions, discovering along the way Lake Edward and Mount Ruwenzori, the fabled “Mountains of the Moon.”
We are pleased to offer the deluxe signed limited edition of Stanley’s account of the expedition, In Darkest Africa, two large thick quarto volumes bound in morocco and vellum, profusely illustrated, including 38 mounted plates on India paper and six full-page etchings each signed by the artist, one of only 250 copies signed by Stanley. Browse our current selection.
The following summer he accompanied Scott’s polar party as far as the summit of the Beardmore Glacier, helping to establish supply and fuel depots. Scott arrived at the Pole only to find that a Norwegian team had beaten him there by a month. 
“A Human Panorama of Love, Courage, Cowardice…
Boccaccio composed his masterpiece sometime between 1348 and 1352, and his realistic – rather than moralistic or allegorical – characters proved enormously influential through the centuries; Shakespeare drew on Boccaccio for Troilus and Cressida, and as many as 54 early English plays derived their plots from the Decameron (Pforzheimer 71).
This is the life of a great man – and the birth of a great nation – written by a man very nearly the equal of his subject, drawn chiefly from Washington’s own diaries, letters and secret archives. Marshall’s “indispensable” five-volume Life was accompanied by an atlas volume containing ten engraved folding maps of Revolutionary War battlefields and troop movements, and is graced by Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait.
Shackleton would later recall the expedition as “high adventure, strenuous days, lonely nights, unique experiences, and above all, records of unflinching determination, supreme loyalty, and the generous self-sacrifice on the part of my men.” The Heart of the Antarctic is his record of the Nimrod expedition; Heinemann issued a special limited large-paper issue of only 300 numbered copies that – in addition to being printed on much larger, handmade paper than the two-volume trade edition – included an additional volume, The Antarctic Book, which was signed by Shackleton and every member of the expedition.
While Tender is the Night sold well for the Depression era, Fitzgerald had hoped for so much more. This would be the last novel he would publish in his lifetime, perhaps the final solid step before the dissolution and disappearance that would so closely parallel the tragic decline of Dick Diver.
John Steinbeck, witnessing the bleak conditions in the California migrant camps, resolved to write a “big book,” chronicling the ordeal of the displaced and disenfranchised. That book was The Grapes of Wrath, his most celebrated and controversial novel, a national bestseller and winner of the 1939 Pulitzer Prize.