Destiny -- A new obsession -- Hanno's wake -- Drawing lines -- American dreams -- To slide into brutish immorality -- An awkward homecoming -- "Unfriends" -- Fever dreams -- Between men and apes -- Maps and legends -- A lion in London -- The man-eaters -- D.O.A -- Spirit of the damned -- Origins -- In the city of wonders -- Fighting words -- The boulevard of broken dreams -- The inner circle -- The unveiling -- The great white hunter -- Into the whirlwind -- Three motives -- The gorilla war -- The squire's gambit -- The gorilla in the pulpit -- Mrs. Grundy and the Cannibal Club -- "Evidence of a spurious origin" -- Shadows of the past -- Black and white -- The impostors -- Shortcuts to glory -- The wager -- The reinvention -- Damaged goods -- The boldest venture -- The armies of the plague -- Running for their lives -- The jury of his peers -- Accidental victories -- The explorer -- No-man's land

Documents the story of mid-19th-century explorer Paul Du Chaillu, who after three years in the equatorial wilderness of West Africa emerged with definitive proof of the existence of the mythical gorilla, only to be swept up by the heated debate about Darwin's theory of evolution