The Congo and the Cameroons (Penguin Great Journeys)

Contemptuous of Europe's 'civilising mission' in Africa, Mary Kingsley's (1862-1900) extraordinary journeys through tropical west Africa are a remarkable record, both of a world which has vanished and of a writer and explorer of immense bravery, wit and humanity. Paddling through mangrove swamps, fending off crocodiles, climbing Mount Cameroon, Kingsley is both admirable and funny. "Great Journeys" allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: great civilizations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

• Life on the Golden Horn (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Great Journeys Can Cans Cats and Cities of Ash (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Piracy, Turtles and Flying Foxes (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Fighting in Spain (Penguin Great Journeys)
• To the Holy Shrines (Penguin Great Journeys)
• The Shipwrecked Men (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Great Journeys Hunt for the Southern Continent (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Great Journeys Snakes with Wings and Gold Digging Ants
• A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire (Penguin Great Journeys)
• The Cobra's Heart (Penguin Great Journeys)