Carthage

 Carthage: A New History- Eve McDonald

W.W. Norton & Co.

Rating: 📚📚📚

Release Date: January 13, 2026

Synopsis: Carthage was a power that dominated the western Mediterranean for almost six centuries before its fall to Rome. The history of the realm and its Carthaginians was subsumed by their conquerors and, along the way, the story of the real Carthage was lost. An ancient North African kingdom, Carthage was the home of Hannibal and of Dido, of war elephants and enormous power and wealth, of great beauty and total destruction.

In this landmark new history, Eve MacDonald tells the essential story of the lost culture of Carthage and of its forgotten people, using brand new archaeological analysis to uncover the history behind the legend. A journey that takes us the Phoenician Levant of the early Iron Age to the Atlantic and all along the coast of Africa, Carthage puts the city and the story of North Africa once again at the centre of Mediterranean history. Reclaimed from the Romans, this is the Carthaginian version of the tale, revealing to us that, without Carthage, there would be no Rome.

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(3.5 stars)

When history is written by the winners, it can mean the losers are all but erased- and that is what happened with Carthage. Anything anyone today knows about the city comes to us from Roman eyes. So this book, trying to find the Carthage that isn't told to us through Roman propaganda, is a fascinating and much needed book for the history shelves.

From the city's founding as a Phoenecian outpost to its destruction by Rome hundreds of years later, Eve McDonald takes readers through the development of a city, a people, and a mega-power whose existence rivaled (and threatened) Rome's desire to dominate the Mediterranean. She critically examines both ancient sources and modern archaeological discoveries to evaluate how different events, trade, sieges, and the wars with Rome would have effected the Carthaginians. I found her explaination of the changes in the power structures across the Mediterranean over time, and how Alexander the Great essentially changed the game for everyone, quite interesting.

The chapters on the Punic Wars were, for me, the clearest and best written. Maybe because there's the most evidence in the historical sources for her to work with. McDonald is never afraid to admit when there is simply not enough information for scholars to do more than some educated guesswork on something, which I admire. By the end of the book I was pretty solidly on Carthage's side and wishing more reasonable treatied could have worked- but apparently that's not what was going on in this time.

An excellent, well-written, well-researched book for anyone who is interested in getting the story Carthage wishes it could have told us. A must-read for ancient history enthusiasts.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

River of the Gods

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, & Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile- Candice Millard

Doubleday

Release Date: May 17, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, there was  a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe – and extend their colonial empires.

Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England. Burton spoke twenty-nine languages, and was a decorated soldier. He was also mercurial, subtle, and an iconoclastic atheist. Speke was a young aristocrat and Army officer determined to make his mark, passionate about hunting, Burton’s opposite in temperament and beliefs.
 
From the start the two men clashed. They would endure tremendous hardships, illness, and constant setbacks. Two years in, deep in the African interior, Burton became too sick to press on, but Speke did, and claimed he found the source in a great lake that he christened Lake Victoria. When they returned to England, Speke rushed to take credit, disparaging Burton. Burton disputed his claim, and Speke launched another expedition to Africa to prove it. The two became venomous enemies, with the public siding with the more charismatic Burton, to Speke’s great envy. The day before they were to publicly debate,Speke shot himself.
 
Yet there was a third man on both expeditions, his name obscured by imperial annals, whose exploits were even more extraordinary. This was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was enslaved and shipped from his home village in East Africa to India. When the man who purchased him died, he made his way into the local Sultan’s army, and eventually traveled back to Africa, where he used his resourcefulness, linguistic prowess and raw courage to forge a living as a guide. Without Bombay and men like him, who led, carried, and protected the expedition, neither Englishman would have come close to the headwaters of the Nile, or perhaps even survived.
 
In River of the Gods Candice Millard has written another peerless story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers.

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Candice Millard's (Hero of the Empire) newest book delves into the search for the source of the White Nile by British explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke and their invaluable, extraordinary guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay. Over multiple trips and many years the men traveled hundred of miles and encountered endless dangers together. With other expedition members, porters, guides, and guards they used (then) Zanzibar as their jumping off point to search for rumored lakes believed to be the source of the Nile River, often nearly starved, died of diseases, insects, and worse. On their second trip, with Burton too ill to continue, Speke and Bombay reached Lake Nyanza (which Speke renamed Lake Victoria), where Speke believed the Nile to originate. Speke didn't prove this to Burton's satisfaction and this doubt was one of the many instances that came between the two explorers to create a rivalry that would last the rest of their lives. 

River of the Gods shows mid-nineteenth century British exploration in all of its complexities: the positive, the negative, and every political, emotional and ethical shade in between. Millard does a good job of balancing Richard Burton and John Speke in the same way. Neither are complete heroes, neither total villains, in their own minds each are completely right in the actions they take and justify themselves along the way. In hindsight we know that the exploration of Africa by England of other countries isn't "just" about the need to fill in blanks on a map- it is leading to complete colonization and further exploitation of people and resources across the continent. We see the contrast of places like Zanzibar: a beautiful paradise of white sandy beaches and clear blue waters, while at the same time one of the worst slave auction sites that bothers even many slavers. Burton is generally someone who takes people as they are, interested in their customs, cultures and languages for what he can learn (whether or not he should) while at the same time being European enough to look down on Africans as a lesser race until the end of his life, while Speke looks down on everyone. What I appreciated about Millard here is that she put everyone's thoughts and actions in the context of their time and not in our modern day sensibilities. We know what we find racist and abhorrent today, so I'd rather know what was the cultural norm at the time and how it changed over the time frame Millard covers, which I thought she did well.   

It is toward the end that she reminds us that there was a third main explorer who deserves as many accolades as Burton and Speke: Sidi Mubarak Bombay. Enslaved as a child, he returned to Africa as an adult and was a trustworthy guide, interpreter, and friend to European explorers like Burton and Speke- and later helped the famous journalist Stanley find Dr. Livingston. Bombay helped shine a light on the native guides and interpreters that Europeans needed to succeed in being "the first" to do so many things, from finding the source of the Nile to climbing Mt. Everest, and that today historians must try to discover the little told stories of these men and women and celebrate them just as much as their more famous (or infamous) European counterparts.

Millard's brilliance for a truly riveting, engaging writing style is evident from page one in River of the Gods, drawing the reader in and refusing to let them go until the final page.  Every step in the exploration, every twist in the bitter verbal sparring between former friends, keeps you emotionally engaged and waiting tensely to see what will happen next.  It isn't just the adventures in Africa that read like adventure stories, it is the entire book.  

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: and their race to save the world's most precious manuscripts- Joshua Hammmer
Simon & Schuster
Release Date: April 19, 2016

Rating:
📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis:  In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds. His goal: to preserve this crucial part of the world’s patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, became one of the world's greatest and most brazen smugglers by saving texts from sure destruction.  With bravery and patience, he organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 377,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. This real-life thriller is a reminder that ordinary citizens often do the most to protect the beauty and imagination of their culture.  It is also the story of a man who, through extreme circumstances discovered his higher calling and was changed forever by it.

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The diverse and beautiful history of Western Africa- Timbuktu in particular- and its influential role in science, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and music is little known to the Western world. But the role of Timbuktu both past and present is celebrated here in Joshua Hammer's outstanding The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.  This is the story of Abdel Kader Haidara, who becomes obsessed with the manuscript legacy of Mali and Timbuktu in particular.  From the 1980s on he worked to convince local families who had, for generations, guarded treasured, fragile manuscripts that it is time for the manuscripts to be protected in modern ways. 45 libraries were built in Timbuktu to house and conserve over 377,000 manuscripts written on goat, sheep, even fish skin.  Some are loose pages while others are bound and decorated with gold and illustrated in vividly colored geometric designs. From the twelfth century onwards, these manuscripts contain generations of writings on Sufism, music, law, astronomy, and history.  Haidara works with professionals from across the globe to perfect conservation methods for these texts and almost single handedly helps revitalize the cultural and scholarly importance of Timbuktu.

But then in 2012 came Al Qaeda: Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Iyad Ag Ghali and their jihadi extremists. Timbuktu is taken and becomes a center for their push to control all of Mali and develop a modern day caliphate.  Everyone knows what Al Qaeda does to art, manuscripts, and the beauty of past ages that does not line up with their view of the world.  It was only a matter of time, Haidara knew, before the treasured texts were destroyed.

And so begins the story of how Haidara, his co-workers, and everyday citizens of Mali worked to smuggle over 377,000 texts out of the libraries they had built in Timbuktu and to the safety of Bamako in Southern Mali.  Perhaps one of the most dangerous and large-scale modern day smuggling operations used cars, donkey carts, boats, and anything else they could find to rescue this incredible cultural treasure.  Part history, part modern journalism, this book is a brilliant, true-life adventure story celebrating the bravery of ordinary citizens who believe passionately in doing the right thing- and that protecting beauty and history is worth overcoming all odds.  It is a triumph of good over evil,  while reminding us that these dangers are still very much present.

Hammer's familiarity with the region through multiple trips helps him bring to life Timbuktu's colorful story.  This brilliantly written, fast-paced page turner lives up to its name and will keep readers on the edge of their seats from start to finish, leaving them both thrilled and inspired by this group of devoted librarians, who are truly bad-ass in the best sense fo the word.