Poured Over: Candice Millard on River of the Gods

“…You have to have so much primary source material that you are drowning, you think you can never get through it all. That’s the only way you get dialogue, you get all those details, you know, that really make you feel like you’re there and kind of at you just like sinking into the story and forgetting everything else.” We’ll follow bestselling author Candice Millard anywhere at any time—her latest book, The River of the Gods, takes us on the epic search for the head of the Nile River with Sir Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke and Sidi Mubarak Bombay, the man who helped them succeed (and stay alive). Candice joins us on the show to talk about the stories and the characters behind “one of the greatest mysteries in this history of human exploration,” her field research and writing process, human nature, disease and disaster, the writers who’ve inspired her and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations featuring Marc and his bookseller guest, Erin.

Featured Books:

The River of the Gods by Candice Millard

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays), here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and I’m really excited, Candice Millard is here. And you know her name from River of Doubt, and Destiny of the Republic. And here of the empire, her new book is River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile. You know, these adventure stories. These are the perfect mix of travel and history and nature writing, which we’re going to come to in a minute, but Candace, thank you so much for joining us.

Candice Millard: Hi, Miwa. Thank you so much for having me. It’s really going to be fun to talk.

B&N: Oh, I can’t wait. So River of the Gods. Let’s set this up for listeners, because it’s brand new. But there’s so much great writing in this book.

CM: Thank you. Well, this is sort of one of these epic stories, these three men struggle to solve one of the greatest mysteries in the history of human exploration, the search for the source of the Nile, which have been going on for 1000s of years, but really, it’s about human nature, which you know, while everything else changes, human nature always stays the same. So this is a story that gets into genius and mediocrity, courage and cowardice, ambition and envy, deep, deep, resentful, simmering, bubbling over envy and friendship and betrayal. So in it all, is sort of plays out and East Africa, which is staggeringly beautiful, kind of the hallowed halls of a Royal Geographical Society in the in the 19th century.

B&N: So we have three sort of main characters. There’s a young Scotsman, there’s Sir Richard Burton. Then they also have a guide called Siri Mubarak Bombay. So let’s start with Speke, the young Scotsman.

CM: If you know Burton, Speke is basically everything Burton is not and Burton is everything speak as either complete opposite, so Speke is what Burtons sort of imagined their heroes to be right. So he’s blond and blue eyed. He was born into the aristocracy raised in this mansion is an eligibility tenant in the British Army. He loves to hunt, and he seems kind of, you know, quiet and unassuming. But he actually has this very, very deep rooted ambition and insecurity. And when he meets Burton, there’s this immediate envy because Burton is famous and Burton is brilliant, and Burton has already accomplished all of this, Burton’s about seven years older, and he’s already accomplished so much. And he is Commander this expedition, which is what Speke wants to be. And so very quickly, this envy grows and grows and there are all these little sort of unintentional things that Burton does that offends people he offends speak and speak doesn’t tell him but he lets it kind of fester, right, until it finally comes out. And it nearly destroys both of them.

B&N: Burton, also his background, I mean, he’s got an extreme facility with languages to the point where he speaks dialects that not a lot of folks outside of those particular territories or countries speak right. He’s also a very accomplished writer. He’s an accomplished speaker.

CM: Right, right.

B&N: A lot of folks have invested in Burton. A lot of folks also don’t quite care for his confidence.

CM: Exactly. So Burton is difficult character as most kind of geniuses are right. He’s deeply flawed. So yes, he spoke more than 25 different languages. You know, he was the first Englishman to enter Mecca despise as a Muslim because his Arabic was flawless. But he deeply studied every religion, every culture and respected none of them. He was just a character when these people you get once in a century, and he was always considered an outsider and England, you know, he wasn’t an aristocracy. In fact, he was kind of British in name only because he’d been born in England. His parents were British, but he had grown up on the continent, right? He had moved 18 times before his 18th birthday, and he just moved from France to Italy to Greece, picking up these languages and cultures along the way. And in many Britons, he also didn’t really look British, right? So he had these black mcare. And these black mesmerizing eyes, and even Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula met Burton before he wrote Dracula and was just obsessed with him. And he describes his gleaming canines, you know, and it’s just fascinating. So some people think understandably, that Burton was maybe the inspiration for Dracula.

B&N: Burton doesn’t mind being famous either. I mean, this moment in world history where explorers are rock stars,

CM: Right. Yeah, they absolutely are. So the Royal Geographical Society was founded in the 30s. Right. And so Charles Darwin was a member David Livingstone. and all these famous people, and it started. So it was kind of struggling in the 40s, they had these very aristocratic members, but like nobody was paying their dues and things. And so they’re trying to find ways to get people to be more interested and involved. And so they start to shift from scientists to these explorers, who, as you say, are really the rock stars of the era, you know, they’re going out to all these places nobody knows about and coming back with these incredible stories or not coming back at all. And so everybody wants to hear them and wants to hear them speak. Of course, everyone knows about Burton. But again, he’s difficult, right? He’s kind of this is a very puritanical age, right? And Burton is interested in everything, including sex. He’s very interested in sex. He wants to write about it. He wants to study it. And that makes Victorian England very uncomfortable.

B&N: He is one of the first translators of the Kama Sutra. He is, yeah, you know, towards the end of his life. Even his wife is kind of like, Oh, he’s a pornographer. What do I do with this.

CM: Very much his wife, who was very, very religious, very devoted to him, but so upset about these translation.

B&N: And so we have these two, Speke, for all of his ambition. And yes, he is a little quiet on the surface. We’ve got two really big personalities and two really big egos. And they’re sort of destined to clash. But there’s a third party that we need to talk about.

CM: Yeah, Sidi Mubarak Bombay. So they first they go to Zanzibar, which was just off the coast of East Africa. What is today Tanzania was the setting place for most of these explorations into Africa. They need they’re actually just on the coast of Tanzania because they meet this man named Sidi Mubarak Bombay. Bombay really becomes very quickly the heart of this expedition, and really, in many ways, the hero of this expedition. So Bombay is a formerly enslaved man, he had been kidnapped as a child from his village in East Africa. He had been sold for cloth in Zanzibar and taken to India, where he was enslaved for 20 years, when the man who owned him died, he was given his freedom. And he made his way back to East Africa. And it’s just really incredible, you know, when Burton and Speke meet him, they are hiring a bunch of people for this expedition that has, you know, 150 or more people, and they just immediately are like, what do you what can we give you so you will go with us, they just understand amazing. And what was interesting about Bombay to me, yes, he was incredibly skilled. He spoke many languages. And he was really, really good with, you know, negotiating with the other reporters and things and keeping them going. But he was incredibly honest, he was incredibly brave. He was incredibly hard working, and he never wanted anything for himself. And what is amazing to me is that he had the biggest heart. I mean, everybody who talks about him and many people do, they talk about how generous he was and how kind he was. And you say, How is that possible after being stolen as a child, everything you know, ripped away from you and slaved for 20 years, and then you somehow emerge from it is incredibly kind and generous and patient person. I don’t know how that happens. But it did happen with Sidi Mubarak Bombay.

B&N: He’s also a bridge between Burton and Speke in a lot of ways because Speke really doesn’t trust Burton. And Bombay hasn’t chosen sides or anything quite like that, but speak really relies on him and as they are on the trail. Well, without giving away too too much that we are going to talk a little bit about some of the details because how these guys stayed alive. I know they know Eli, is amazing. I know.

CM: It doesn’t make you incredibly grateful for just the simplest things, you know, and it’s not an extraordinarily difficult journey that lasted almost two years they faced everything you can imagine. I mean, the strangest most terrifying diseases you know, both men were nearly blinded. Burton was so ill from malaria that he was paralyzed, could not walk for almost a year couldn’t even use his hands to write and he was constantly writing that’s part of who he was. Couldn’t hold a pen you know, when I there is attacked by a horde of beetles and blinds into his ear. And this starts burrowing deeper and deeper and deeper it goes into his going insane and so he’s trying oil, he’s pouring in his melted butter, you know, anything to try to get it out and finally out of desperation, takes a pen knife and sit in his ear. And yes, he kills the beetle and it sort of slowly comes out and bits and pieces over time, you know, and the blacksmith lay there. But he’s deafened for the rest of his life in that year. So the things that they say And they’re constantly a millimeter away from starvation. They’re exhausted and they’re frightened and earlier on they had been attacked one night when they were in Somaliland on just a very earlier expedition, and one of their expedition was killed, Speke was kidnapped and stabbed 11 times, amazing that he survived and Burton had a javelin thrust, jaw sticking out from Cheek to cheek sticking, you know, severing his palate, knocking out all these teeth, and for like an hour he had to walk around with this Javelin stuck out of his face. And that leaves him with this incredible scar that makes him seem even more kind of sinister and suspicious than he had before. So yeah, it is extraordinarily extraordinarily difficult expedition. And really Bombay is the person who him all together and keeps him sane.

B&N: Somehow their supplies were not well planned, they didn’t really have what they needed. And then as they resupplied, they didn’t get what they needed. Again, they kept well…

CM: A lot of it. Right. Right. A lot of it was they just couldn’t bring it with them on the coast, because they didn’t have enough people and donkeys to carry everything, you know, what they relied on people who were coming from the interior, right with ivory and with slaves to trade in this huge monsoon season. And all that was delayed, they just couldn’t find people. And also, a lot of people didn’t want to work for the Europeans, these white people come in, they didn’t trust them. And so even when they had people, a lot of times people would desert, you know, either either, they’re just like, it wasn’t worth it, it was so difficult or so dangerous. Or they would also see Burton and Speke again and again and again, near death themselves, you know, and thinking I’m never going to be paid. So it’s really hard to find people on to keep people.

B&N: So obviously, we have the characters, obviously, we have the action, obviously, we have this wonderful narrative. But part of what got me as I was reading too is this idea that they were undergoing this incredibly dangerous project. And the rewards would be there. I mean, certainly they were not just doing this, because they needed something to do for two years. But this was not Tuesday, I think we’ll go for a walk.

CM: Yeah, not a vacation.

B&N: This is also a moment to where the royal Geographic Society is sort of pivoting from their scientific base into this idea of exploration. Because as I mentioned earlier, it was the thing it was like, you know, when we were sending people into space, the equivalent of the astronauts in the 60s, really, and certainly there are other examples. But the Brits controlled so much of the world and that point, through various entities, whether it was the British government or the East India Company, or what have you. And they all sort of have this attitude that well, you know, until we map it, it doesn’t really exist.
CM: Yes. Mesonet there, I know, I know exactly this idea of discovering the largest lake in Africa and second largest freshwater lake in the world, you know, and we’re going to discover it and we’re going to name and after our clean, even though the all these people who live there, and you use this lake and you for everything you can imagine. But ya know, it was obviously just incredible, incredible arrogance for the time. But what started it all what I found really interesting is because you know, before this, it was Europeans were all about Rome and Greece, right. And so we are going to learn those languages. And we’re going to try to copy them. And they’re just this obsession with Rome and Greece. And then very end of the 1800s when Napoleon was in Egypt, fighting the British, it found the Rosetta Stone, right, and they’re gonna now unlock and they’re like, oh, wait, this is an even older civilization. This is even richer civilization. We want this. And so the Britons were like, no, we want this and so all the Europeans are fighting for it. And so they want to know, obviously, as much as they can and to appropriate as much as they can about engineering. They also want to understand what makes it work and that’s denial, right? So this event is largely desert, right? It’s the Nile that brings it life and so understand, okay, and for millennia, people have been saying, Okay, we’ll start at the Mediterranean Sea and the we’ll ascend, but now we’re heading the swamps and nobody could get anywhere and so it’s after the found the Rosetta Stone and everyone’s really obsessed with Egypt now and we’re like, okay, okay, let’s take another tactic. Let’s start below the equator. Let’s start on the East Coast well below that equator and go inward and try to find and there have been all these rumors about old news this lake region right what is it and meet somebody these German missionary explorers came up with this really strange map right, the slug map. And they just drew this giant giant lake in the middle of Easter. Africa, they said we think this is the source of the Nile. So Burton and speak in Bombay, and they start moving along and they’re meeting people and they’re being told, Oh, there’s not one huge lake there are three of them. And so Burton thinks it’s got to be the Ganga, Nika which is you know Western Tanzania Junaid, Tanzania and is incredibly, incredibly long, incredibly deep. It’s, it’s like 4500 feet deep, it’s incredibly deep. And he sure that’s going to be the source of the Nile.

B&N: We’re staying away from sort of the last little of the book because there is so much more that happens. But I wanted listeners to really sort of understand how much happens early on, before we even get to the stuff that really, shall we say pops. Yeah. For you as the writer. And certainly this isn’t the first kind of epic, historical travelogue that you’ve done. I mean, we’re going to come back to a river of doubt your book about Teddy Roosevelt in the Amazon. But how do you build a book like this? You’re balancing the personalities, you’re balancing what was known, the bits you’re looking for? I mean, is this kind of a little bit you know it when you see it? I mean, you were with National Geographic for a number of years before you started writing books.

CM: Right? I was. And in fact, that’s where I first heard the story about Burton and Speke, and then how different they were and this enmity between them. And so I was always fascinated with their story. So this was kind of in the back pocket for a long time. But then I started researching it. And I found Sidi Mubarak Bombay, and then it all made sense, you know it all and also, then I was like, Okay, I really want to tell the story, because I’m really interested in him. And also, I hope that we’re finally at a point where we can just met, Nick, like, who really made these expeditions having me yes, these guys were brilliant, and they were brave, but nothing would have happened. And these explorations anywhere in the world, without the local people who helped them find food and water, and to help them get there. You know, we’re guides, and we’re nurses, and we’re negotiators, I mean, they’re just incredibly, incredibly important. So to the extent that I could, I really wanted to tell them that story, as well. And so I had the great joy and privilege of going to East Africa, and really getting to see where the story played out. And in go to Zanzibar, and it was in the market where Bombay was sold, et cetera, et cetera. It was just this incredible experience. So I began actually, so you know, it takes me about five years, usually to write a book 80% of that is research and structure, we are talking about building a book. So a lot, a lot of my work is out cleaning and organizing. And so I went to the UK early on, did research in Scotland at the library at the National Library there. Did research in London, the Royal Geographical Society, Royal Asiatic society for British libraries, fun, fun, fun, it was so interesting. I even went well, okay, I won’t give it away. But the big, shocking part at the end, I was there as well, which was really incredible, and still missing family and everything. Anyway, that was incredible. You know, what I was really looking forward to was going to East Africa, it’s difficult to do that, you know, it’s expensive. It’s far, I have three children who were younger at that time, my oldest is now in college, but everybody was at home at that time. So anytime I would go on a research trip or bookstore my parents come to say, so it took me a couple of years to just find the time when I can go and make it come and everything was fine. Well, it just so happened that we landed on February of 2020. That is when I went and it was kind of late February. And I didn’t know I mean, there wasn’t much in the United States at that time. Of course, everybody’s aware of it, that I remember having a conversation with my son and him saying, is this a pandemic, mom? And I was like, no, no, no, no, this is not a pandemic. So anyway, went to Kenya first. And then Zanzibar, which is just everything that you can imagine, you know, you think, magical world and it is like every color, every sound, every smell, it was just like you’re just steeped in it and so much history, and then I was in mainland Tanzania class to make tank and Nika in the West, and then up to a Nyanza, which we now know is like the Korea so it was really any credible, credible strip.

B&N: How do you physically travel between those legs? I mean, obviously, we are 150 years past when this first expedition went out, I have not been to Africa. I’m assuming that there are a lot more paved roads than there were.

CM: Yes, yeah. Yes. Obviously, it’s a lot more much, much, much more developed. But it’s still I mean, there’s still large, large large spans that are largely not populated and just empty. So it’s difficult and I said it’s expensive. So a lot of what you have to do is you have to get charter flight because you’re covering 1000s of miles. I mean, it’s just so it’s just so far and you don’t have much time. So you not only was I trying to figure out a time with my family, but I was also trying to plan this because you got one shot. When you go there, you need to make sure you can get what you need, and you can meet the people. And so you have to hire somebody who will help you, you know, and make these introductions, help you get where you need to go, and just planning everything. And it’s really complicated, you know, but it’s just an unbelievable, it’s an extraordinary experience. Really, I can’t, you know, it is definitely the best part of the job.

B&N: All of your books are very heavy on the research. Obviously, your last book was the Churchill in Africa during the Boer War, which is a side of Churchill that not a lot of us had seen until your book and then previous to that was the Garfield assassination book which the assassin actually would not have killed. Yeah, exactly. You started with River of Doubt. And this is Theodore Roosevelt. He has been defeated. He has a little bit of time on his hands. There’s been a lot of death in his family. And he’s trying to figure out what’s next. And he decides to go to the Amazon. And when did he go again?

CM: 1914 And then to 1915.

B&N: So quite a while after Speke and Burton and Bombay are making their way through East Africa, to the head of the Nile. But his story is not dissimilar, and a lot of there’s a little bit of ego involved.

CM; And you might say that.

B&N: And you know, at least he’s got someone locally to help as well, because it’s really Roosevelt and his second son, Kermit, and local guide and someone else. But at the time, you were still at National Geographic, right? When you started that book.

CM: Well, I left to write this. Yeah, I was moving from Washington to Kansas City. And yeah, when I got the idea when I, you know, wrote the proposal, I was at National Geographic.

B&N: So when did you know that Roosevelt’s story needed to be a book and not a magazine article? I mean, you can see sort of where I’m going with this question, because a lot of your work, some of it could start as a magazine article. I love the books. But how do you know when to make that shift?

CM: So I’m working in National Geographic, I absolutely love it. It was so much fun. And I had worked really hard to get the job. And I got married. And I’m going to move to Kansas City. And I think, you know, I love Kansas City. But what can I do that I love as much and it’s actually my husband, who had been a reporter for the New York Times for years. And he was like, You should write a book, which seems when you’ve never written a book seems so audacious and ridiculous, like, Well, who do I think I am? I can write a book, you know, but what’s interesting to me, yes, every book I’ve written, it’s very narrow, right? And it’s not like I you know, I don’t write cradle to grave biographies. I don’t write full full histories. I try to dig in really, really deep. And it’s what I love about writing. It’s what I love about reading, right? When you can take a story and really dig in, right really get to know these characters really get to know this event. So for instance, with Roosevelt, this, and he took on this unmapped River in the Amazon, and there’s death. And you know, there’s a pack and it wasn’t nearly killed himself. But if you look at most biographies of him, and there are a lot of biographies about Theodore Roosevelt, a few paragraphs because it’s after his active political career and people think okay, yeah. And also he did this, you know, if you look at it deeply, it’s fascinating. And it’s also incredibly illuminating about him and about this time in history. So that’s what I love to do. So I set out wanting to write a book, but this story was a gift to me. Somebody said, Oh, have you heard about this trip? And so I started doing research, and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, it’s everything I want. And I can talk about the Amazon, I can talk about evolution, I can talk about natural history, which I’ve been steeped in for six years at National Geographic.

B&N: One of the things I love too, about that book and the way you can sort of you as the writer, in your research too where you say, Well, I went to the Amazon and here’s Theodore Roosevelt thinking oh, he’s just going to feed himself by shooting animals and he hadn’t taken into account the fact that the animals have adapted to their environment and they know how to hide so they don’t get eaten.

CM: No, they’re so much better at it than he is you think oh, he’s this Hunter right and even run down that Brazilian news with the moods and his life you know, right trying to map the Amazon he start everybody starving. Yeah, oh, man, I went there when I went to the Amazon like, Oh, I get you are being eaten alive by insects, right. But anything that you can eat, good luck, you know, it’s very, very difficult to find it much less kill it.

B&N: And that’s so much these physical constraints, whether it’s gear or money, or time or people or all of these things. and somehow folks like to leave those out of the story. You know, Burton’s account of things or Roosevelt’s account of things, certainly they’re just kind of like, well, I went and I did the thing and I conquered. And I did.

CM: Right. Right, right. They don’t like to share the struggle too much. Yeah. Takes away from the image.

B&N: The pedestrian parts, the really dangerous pedestrian parts. And for you as the writer, though, how do you balance the needs of the story? Because obviously, you are bound by facts in a way that you wouldn’t be if you were writing a novel. You still need to think about narrative pacing, because that’s one of the pleasures of reading your work. It just never stops moving. But at the same time, there’s a level of detail, there’s a level of character development, and I use character development, even though we’re talking about historical people.

CM: Yeah, no, absolutely. Of course, yeah.

B&N: You still need to bring them to life on the page. It can’t just be Hi, I’m Teddy Roosevelt, you know?

CM: Right, right. Well, and that’s what we were talking about earlier, where the outlining and everything comes in. So actually, it starts with the idea. So there have been many times when I’ve had ideas that I love, I found loads of great characters. It’s such a great story. But like you’re saying, it’s probably a magazine story, right? There’s not enough there, you have to have so much primary source material that you are drowning, you think you can never get through it all. That’s the only way you get dialogue, you get all those details, you know, that really make you feel like you’re there and kind of at you just like sinking into the story and forgetting everything else. And there’s no way to do that, factually, without just a ton of primary source material. So I start with that, do I have so much that I think I’ll never get through it all? And if I do, then I start, you gather it all as much as you can, right? And then you start to figure out how am I going to tell the story because I write character sketches, you know, you have to get to know each of these people, and what are their motivations? And what are their flaws? You know, and what’s the danger here? And then you have to try to set things up. So like, for instance, with my book about Garfield, right, so one of the things that I was struggling with, there’s like, okay, yeah, everybody knows he was assassinated, but you don’t really care, because there’s a long time ago, and he was only president for a little bit of time. And Isn’t he just one of those build age presidents, you know, who cares? So my first thing was to show you why you should care. This guy was brilliant, and brave and kind and incredibly progressive. And there was a huge, tremendous loss to the country. So you have to understand who he was first, right? So I knew that. Also, I wanted you to send the danger that he could not. So I have this guy in Utah, right, who’s clearly insane, clearly, deeply troubled, and he is stalking president. And so here’s Garfield is going by his life. He’s like, Oh, I don’t really want to be president. But okay, I’ll do my best, you know, and you’re like, you love him. You care about him, and you’re willing to say, Turn around, turn around, you know, this guy is gonna kill you. But he doesn’t know. But you, the reader do. And so the only way to do that is to work on the outline, right, set up that structure ahead of time. I mean, it takes me a year just working on the outline, and it but you might it’s kind of fun, because it’s like a puzzle. It’s like solving a puzzle, right? And you can move things around that way. And you don’t have to yet worry about things like you’re talking about, like, like pasting and word choice and rhythm. Once you know how you’re going to tell the story, then you can work on hopefully writing it well.

B&N: And it doesn’t hurt when someone like Winston Churchill shows up on a battlefield with a white pony. So you’re like, dude.

CM: Exactly. I know. Yeah. Everyone’s Oh, that’d be these like little gifts. You’re like, well, thank you very much. I can use that. Yeah, that is crazy. I’ll throw that in there. And also, you know, another really great gift that’s been given to me with each of these books is each of the main characters was himself, an incredible writer. So I can just quote from them all day long, and makes me look really good. Like, wow, this is so beautifully written. Yeah, Winston Churchill wrote that but thank you.

B&N: It is also a way for us to understand how we got where we are. I mean, there’s so many pieces of the puzzle. Even if you look at all four books together, actually. There’s a very consistent through line. It’s also how we see the world.

CM: That’s right. It’s what we were talking about earlier about human nature. It doesn’t change and like you were saying this, see this arrogance, you see this recklessness or this determination or whatever. And we know people. Yeah, that’s just like somebody I know. Or I realized kind of early on when I’m writing. It’s like, I’m not interested in these moments of triumph, right when they’re at their best and everybody’s applauding. I’m interested in the moments of struggle, right when they are grieving, or they are dying, or they are scared, they can’t figure it out. And that’s where you really see someone’s character. And that’s where we can really connect to them. Because I obviously have nothing in common with Winston Churchill. But I understand what he was feeling when he’s escaping from the boars, and he’s by himself and he’s terrified. Yeah, I understand that.

B&N: We know who you were now, as a writer, but how are you as a reader? Who were some of your influences?

CM: I’ve always been a huge, huge reader. In fact, you know, I grew up in this little town in Ohio, and I thought I would be a teacher or librarian, either, which I would would have loved because I didn’t know anybody who was a writer. You know, it didn’t honestly occur to me that I could be a writer. I actually read a lot of fiction, but I’m kind of ruthless when it comes to my fiction, you know, I have to either love it and and you know, the older so I’m going to be 55 This summer, and actually quite a while ago. Life is too short. They’re doing good books. If I’m reading something, even everybody else loves it and thinks it’s brilliant. I don’t love it. I’m gonna continue. I’m gonna move on to the next one. With nonfiction. I give it a little more latitude. If I don’t love the writing. If I’m still learning something from it. I keep going. But I have a lot a lot of nonfiction heroes. I mean, in my own field of narrative nonfiction, Erik Larson is at the very top Laura Hillenbrand, Stacy Schiff, Barbara Tuchman. I mean, they’re, you know, I can just go on and on and on. So they’re just like, yeah, a lot of people I really, really admire and always look forward to their next book.

B&N: Have you started thinking about what’s next? I mean, I realize it takes you five years to sort of get up and running. But there’s this conventional wisdom that maybe you have the next project going as the current one is going out into the world.

CM: Well, I, you know, strangely, I mean, I didn’t think I would it usually takes me a long time. But and I haven’t written up the proposal. So I can’t really say what it is. Because I don’t know if my agent, my editor gonna like it or not, but I think they are, because I’m super, super excited about it. Yeah, I just doing some reading as usually happens, and just kind of ran across this and then was able to start digging in. And, you know, it’s one of the things I kept telling myself, I really need to be thinking about this book that’s coming out. And I am I’m so excited about it. But at the same time, you know, you can’t resist a new story and a new idea. And so I’ve been able to dig enough that I know, it has a ton of primary source material. It has a ton of great, great extra characters. It’s a great, unbelievably inspirational, shocking story that I’m so excited to tell. And I’ll just say it set in World War One.

B&N: This all sounds good.

CM: Thank you. I’m very excited.

B&N: Before we wrap up, though, what do you want listeners to know about reading and writing history? I mean, it is essentially the heart of what you do.

CM: Well, you know, I always say I love reading academic histories as well. And it’s hugely important. And I always say that narrative nonfiction, to me is kind of the gateway drug for a lot of people, because there are so many people who will come up to me and say, I never liked history, I thought I didn’t like history until I started reading you or started reading Erik Larson, Laura, whoever it might be, and I love it. And that is the best thing anybody can say to me. And also, then often they’ll say, and now I’m reading this full biography of James Garfield, or now I want to know more about this time in history. And so they’re going to the deeper academic histories. And so I really hope that even people who think they don’t like history, I bet you can find some history that you like, you know, because there’s so many amazing stories. And you know, and it’s absolutely truly so many of these stories. So often, I think, if I wrote this, and a novel, people be like, That is ridiculous. That would never happen. You’re the worst writer for even bringing that up. You just wouldn’t buy it, it’s real, you know, you can prove I’ve got all these footnotes. This really happened. That is just amazing, you know, and so fun. And so I just would encourage everybody, if you think you don’t like history, you’re wrong. You’re just haven’t found the right history.

B&N: And it really is all about the people.

CM: Yes, absolutely. Exactly. You’re exactly right. It’s all about the people and again, human nature does not change. Everything else changes. Human nature does not change. You will always it doesn’t matter how long ago or where this person was or what their life is like. There are things in it you can connect to and you can understand whether you like them or not.

B&N: Okay, Candice, people have so much to look forward to in River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile. That subtitle is a treat.

CM: Thank you so much I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you