Mandela: An Illustrated Autobiography

Mandela: An Illustrated Autobiography

From BooklistAdapted from the best-selling memoir, Long Walk to Freedom (1994), this handsomely designed, large-size volume with 200 photographs is sure to become most readers' first choice for reading about Mandela. The text has been cut, but not that much; there's still an extraordinary amount of detail about his personal life and the history and politics of the antiapartheid struggle, about his years underground, his 27 years in prison, and his triumphant election as president of South Africa's first democracy. In the original autobiography, there were some good photos, but they were small and clumped together. This book, with thick paper and lots of white space, has a high-quality photo on almost every page. The pictures don't just illustrate the historical account, they extend it. South Africa's great photographers, including Peter Magubane, Jurgen Schadeburg, and many more, document the events in their country. They capture the daily and the cataclysmic: what it has been like for those who live there, blacks and whites, separate and unequal for so long. The famous images are here (children carrying the body of Hector Peterson after the 1976 Soweto uprising; Mandela with his arm raised in triumph on his release from prison), but some pictures are new, published here for the first time. With its compelling cover portrait, full captions, and many sidebar quotes, this book will grab browsers, who will then find it hard to stop reading the amazing story. Hazel RochmanNelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most inspiring political drama in the world. Mandela: An Illustrated Autobiography tells the extraordinary story of Nelson Mandela's life, an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph. With nearly 200 stunning photographs - many of them published here for the first time - and with text adapted from his remarkable memoir Long Walk to Freedom, this moving book captures the indomitable spirit of a moral giant and dramatically portrays his struggle toward freedom. Mandela's journey is vividly and eloquently recounted: the development of his political consciousness, his pivotal role in the formation of the African National Congress Youth League, his years underground - which led to a sentence of life imprisonment in 1964 - and his twenty-seven years behind bars. He also movingly recounts the momentous events leading up to his victory in South Africa's first-ever multiracial elections in 1994.From Library JournalThis handsome 91/4" x 103/8" book abridges South African leader Mandela's acclaimed 1994 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and adds some 200 photographs. It also contains a substantial amount of text, making it a suitable introduction for those without the time to read the longer work. The photos, from a variety of archives and journalistic sources, ably illustrate Mandela and, even more so, the South Africa around him. While photos of protests and trials predominate, there are images of the rural areas of Mandela's youth, of the smoky segregated townships of his lawyer days in Johannesburg, and of Mandela's family and African National Congress comrades. The photos taken after Mandela's release from prison and South Africa's democratic election capture historic scenes. For most public libraries, especially where interest in Mandela has been high.?Norman Oder, "Library Journal"Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.From the Back CoverNelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Priz