In 1973, Tim Jeal published a monumental life of Livingstone to both critical acclaim and missionary outrage. This was the legendary explorer with a heart of steel, a disaster as a family man, a failure in his quest for the source of the Nile and in converting Africans to Christianity. But there was recognition that he opened a path for others to follow, ultimately leading to the great European scramble for the dark continent.

Jeal continues to be a man for Africa.

In the light of his Livingstone epic one would have expected a similar attitude to Stanley. However, in Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer (Faber, £25), the ruthlessness is portrayed as cloaked in self-aggrandisement, which turned out to be an enemy more fierce than the trials of fever and desertion and cannibal conflict that were the hallmarks of his desperate missions.

This is a book to be savoured, following the adventures of a courageous Victorian who spent a great deal of his life obsessively veiling his Welsh workhouse background. Stanley had an immense driving force, surviving the American Civil War (fighting on both sides), reporting on the opening of the Suez Canal and witnessing the British invasion of Abyssinia, finally achieving immortal fame in his rendezvous with Livingstone.

Concentrate on Stanley's expeditions, however, to understand his heroic stature. His trans-Africa journey of 1874-77 as well as his later quest for the reluctant Emin Pasha were models of determination against all odds. He was not known as the "breaker of rocks" for nothing. That poignant meeting with Livingstone might have made him, but it was his penetration of the Congo at the start of a very violent era under King Leopold that ultimately tarnished his reputation. Jeal shows that Henry Morton was there for the exploration, not as part of the ruler's intrigue in carving for himself a fiefdom based on wild rubber.

Interestingly, the portrait used for Jeal's book on Livingstone 34 years ago is also the frontispiece for another excellent book on African exploration, Dr Livingstone, I Presume: Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers and Empire (Profile, £15.99), by Clare Pettitt. Any new book that dwells on the famous meeting at Ujiji is bound to raise stirring emotions. Near Victoria Falls, at a lodge appropriately called the Stanley and Livingstone, there is a large painting depicting the historic moment, with both men doffing their caps and the stars and stripes in the background.

Pettitt looks very closely at Livingstone's crusade against the slave trade and his relationship with the Arabs who commanded it deep into Africa's interior. Her assessment of the missionary's character is close to Jeal's than to the Christian communities that still raise a halo above his endeavours. The Livingstone conundrum gives Pettitt an opportunity to offer a wide-scale view of imperialism, which she does with colour and creativity. Even today a trek from Zanzibar to the Atlantic still involves great risks. Stanley and Livingstone both made the great traverse from east to west in the 19th century - it called for fortitude and endurance on an awesome scale and both men, hardened by a tough background, left a legacy that continues to challenge.