"A New York Times best seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real?life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishment