David Livingstone is buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart lies beneath a mpundu tree in present-day Zambia. This deep dive looks past the Victorian myth at a man shaped by 14-hour shifts in a Scottish cotton mill, who merged science and faith and set out to end the East African slave trade.

We follow his path from Blantyre to medical school and Africa, the lion attack that crippled his arm, his single documented convert Sechele, and his belief that river trade routes could defeat slavery. Then we cover the crossing of the continent, the disastrous Zambezi expedition, the search for the source of the Nile, the Nyangwe massacre, the meeting with Henry Morton Stanley, and the journey that carried his body to the coast.

• How Thomas Dick’s book convinced him that studying nature was a form of worship
• Why demands on Sechele over polygamy and rainmaking clashed with African political realities
• Christianity, commerce, and civilization: his plan to undercut slavers with steamboat trade
• Whether ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’ was ever actually said
• How Chuma and Susi carried his body and journals to the coast, helping close the Zanzibar slave market