Rating: 
Summary: Highest Praise for the Two Niles; Blue & White
Review: I have just re-read the two volume Nile series after a twenty year interval, if anything I appreciated them more this time. A stunning view of the time preceding ours and a new appreciation of the cultural inheritance we all must deal with, like it or no. What a legion of men, inspired, some misguided, fanatical, religiously devoted, brave beyond measure, and showing all the failings of human nature. Not to be missed!
Rating: 
Summary: Gotta love Alan Moorehead
Review: If you enjoy history you'd better read Alan Moorehead. He's a historian from a different era. Puts you right there. Introduces you to the some of history's great characters. Always a great story: Gallipoli, Captain Cook, WW2's desert war, and with this gem, the emergence of east africa in the 19th century. No legions of hired researchers, no thousand page tomes, no politically correct revisionism, just a great writer giving us a great story.
Rating:
Summary: Destined to be a Classic
Review: This book and its companion book "The Blue Nile" will not disappoint anyone looking for an interesting story of equatorial exploration, in the days when the interior of Africa was still the "great unknown " to the world at large. This book has fallen into or is teetering on the brink of political incorrectness in some circles, but it is amazing that that is what is drawn from this book. It is one of the best accounts of the exploration for the source of the Nile river. The source was not known by the world at large until a series of explorations and conquests took place. Taking an overall view, armies still clashed with the native inhabitants, explorers still faced hardships and ordeals. A portion of World History took place in this area,.in what was probably the last equatorial "Man against Nature exploration struggles The book is extremely well written. A very entertaining style. I rate the Blue and White Nile together. The White Nile led me to the Blue Nile book and a plan for some follow-up reading on the explorer, Richard Francis Burton. The main point is the shocking realization that that source of one of the world most historic
rivers was not common knowledge until fairly recent times.
Rating: 
Summary: Badly Dated
Review: This book relates the Western attempts of the 19th Century to find the fabled source of the Nile River. (Evidently the other main branch, the Blue Nile, is just some kind of wuss river and its particular source was easily found.) Written in 1960, this study was just recently released in a new edition, which I feel is a bit of a mistake, inasmuch as it really seems to have first been printed in 1860. In Moorehead's prose (not merely the quotes of the explorers), the Africans are invariably "savage", "primitive", and "ignorant". Their lack of civilization is frequently bemoaned, as is their embrace of superstition and paganism, which is evidently the result of their inability to comprehend advanced concepts. Also, it goes without saying that they are lazy and indolent and usually up to no good. On the other hand, he does admit that no one asked the various parties from England, America, France, and Germany to go tearing around the countryside and that great harm came as a result of these intrusions. However, it is not exactly the case that East Africa was a pristine wilderness, since apparently it had been overrun by Arab slavers for centuries. Anyway, we get to learn a bit about Burton (of "A Thousand And One Nights" fame) and Speke, Grant, Baker, Livingstone and Stanley, and Gordon. For the most part, the book pretty much breaks down into a first half about the explorations that took place up until Gordon became Governor-General of the Sudan, and then in the second half it relates the tragic events of the uprising of the Mahdi, the siege of Khartoum, and the later punitive expeditions to finally uproot the rebels and return the Sudan to the proper authorities (i.e. the English, operating through their Egyptian puppets). I gotta say the section about Gordon and his lieutenant Emin was pretty stirring and tragical and stuff. I should read up some more on this. And it was pretty cool to see some more 20th century types like Churchill, Kitchener, and Beatty go drifting through. That Churchill--he sure got around, eh? But the book really was spoiled for me by the overt racism, which was of a weird flavor, seeing as how the author also berated the explorers for their own bad attitudes towards Africans. Dude--don't criticize yer neighbor for having a splinter in his eye when you have a plank in yer own, all right?
Rating:
Summary: The White Nile by Alan Moorehead
Review: This book was the source material for the BBC, Time-Life video "The Search For The Nile". I was fascinated by the story and the characters who inhabit this rich retelling of 19th century determination, evangelism, jingoism, and adventure. Moorehead's book has led me to other authors, Byron Farwell and David Fromkin among them, who have kept me busy with books for the last twenty years. I recommend this book and any of Moorehead's other titles to anyone with an interest in history and an appetite for a good story well told.
Rating: 
Summary: racist master story-teller
Review: This is in some sense a hard book to read. On the one hand, Moorehead is a very good story teller. So one feels compelled to read on. On the other hand, with almost every page there are jarring instances of crude racist stereotypes. To read on, one is then left caught in this tension, seduced for a minute into his vividly painted world then suddenly bowled over my another reference to superior races or another description equating blacks with animals. Jolly, engaging poison.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: This is one of those books you simply fall in love with. It's like an old friend you keep coming back to, year after year. The White Nile and the Blue Nile are two of the greatest history/travel books I have ever read. Alan Moorehead is a genius.
Rating:
Summary: They don't come better than this
Review: This volume is set in the latter half of the 19th Century, and narrates the quest to discover the source of the Nile, followed by the attempted exploitation of Africa, the struggle for power, sveral wars, and so on. It is a very worthwhile read. Alan Moorehead is the best writer of documentary literature that I know of. He is a joy to read: informative, funny, entertaining, but still a shrewd intellectual with a profound understanding of history. I particularly enjoyed the exploration part, which brings to life such larger-than-life characters as Livingstone, Stanley, Burton, Speke, etc. These early explorers make even the most intrepid modern daredevils look like couch potatoes. While reading some parts of the book one cannot help but draw parallels to current events. Many of the events recounted could as well have happened today - including horrific savagery in Central Africa, and moslem fanaticism in the Sudan. Perhaps we have not really come very far in 150 years.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the read.
Review: Though difficult to pull through after the initial excitement, this is a wonderful historical account of the Nile region. As specialists in Uganda, we were particularly interested in the first part of the book. Despite the "stiff" read, well worth the effort. Enjoy!
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