In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers - and fortune hunters - than the lost city of Timbuktu. Africa's legendary City of Gold, not visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages, held the promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale. Unwilling to trust in the slender chances of a lone explorer, the British sent several on their way. "The Race for Timbuktu" follows Major Alexander Gordon Laing's arduous trek across an unforgiving Sahara, battling unpredictable elements, crippling illness, vicious attacks - and the clock - to be the first white man in centuries to reach the gates of Timbuktu. In bringing Laing's dramatic story to life, Frank T. Kryza also provides a narrative history of the first phase of the colonization of Africa, which in less than a century would see nearly every square mile of the continent occupied by the nations of Europe.