Monday, March 9, 2026

The News: A User's Manual, Alain de Botton, c. 2014.

The News: A User's Manual, Alain de Botton, c. 2014.

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The Book Page

Today: The News: A User's Manual, Alain de Botton, c. 2014.

The book was a gift from our younger daughter many years ago.

Time to explore Uganda. Get the map out; it's time to take a look at Uganda.  

Look at all the place names in the short piece below. 

And then there's John Hanning Speke (1827 - 1864), who discovered the source of the Nile and re-named the lake we now know as Lake Victoria.

Before our time, the only way to get to Uganda was to travel for two months by sea around the perilous Cape of Good Hope bound for Dar es Salaam, then inland for another few months through bush and desert, with every likelihood that one would never return. 

In 1859, on the eve of the US Civil War, John Hanning Speke, the first European ever to enter Uganda and the man who gave Lake Inyansha its new name, Lake Victoria, made it back to Britain and gave a lecture on his travels to an almost hysterical 800-strong crowd in the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington.  

The News: A User's Manual, Alain de Botton, c. 2014.

The News: A User's Manual , Alain de Botton , c. 2014. ************************* The Book Page Today:  The News: A User's Manual , A...