OT: Book talk and signing by Dane Kennedy on Monday

My friend, the historian Dane Kennedy will talk about his book The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia, on Monday at noon, in the Mumford Room of the Library of Congress. He used materials from P&P, G&M, and General Collections in his research.  Following is from press release--

 

"… Kennedy surveyed dozens of expeditions into Africa and Australia in the 19th century, nothing that these journeys adopted a mode of scientific investigation that had been developed by previous generations of seaborne explorers. They viewed the two continents as "vast uninhabited oceans," empty spaces that could be made truly knowable only by mapping, measuring, observing and preserving. They found, however, that their survival and success depended less on this system of universal knowledge than it did on the local knowledge possessed by indigenous peoples…"