African Lives: White Lies, Tropical Truth, Darkest Gossip, and Rumblings of Rumor--From Chinese Gordon to Beryl Markham, and Beyond

Supplementing his experiences in Africa with tales from other books and adding gossip, freelance writer Boyles here wisecracks his way through the Dark Continent, singling out exploits of adventurers he has met or heard about. Among them: Patrick David Shaw, a 300-pound Nairobi school administrator who freelances as a terrifying white cop in a black neighborhood; Emin Pasha (originally Silesian-born Eduard Schnitzer), who created and ran Equatoria, in the southern Sudan, until he was ousted by the Rambo of explorers, H. M. Stanley; Staffan Domingo de-Mistura, a ``movie-perfect, hemi-Italian aristo-activist,'' whose brainchild, Operation Rainbow, was one of the most troubled and troublesome emergency food-and-medicine airlifts in recent memory. Boyles goes along on relief flights with the cargo cowboys who fly beat-up planes, most notably ``George Pappas,'' who amassed $2 million in two years``not bad for a guy who had landed in Africa on the run from a batch of law enforcement and tax agencies and an angry wife.'' Some of these stories appeared originally in Alan Moorehead's works and in books by or about Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, but they are fun to read again in Boyles' livelier versions. (September)