Fieldwork: A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari by Christopher H. Scholz
This memoir of a three-month-long field expedition to northern Botswana tracks the adventures of a group of American scientists trying to gather critical data in some of the wildest and most inhospitable parts of Africa. The goal of the Scholz expedition was to determine, by recording tiny natural earthquakes, if a previously unknown arm of the East African Rift system had propagated into the Kalahari from the north. The memoir captures the obstacles encountered in this endeavour, from primative bushmen and belligerent local officials, to near-fatal elephant stampedes.