Long Walk To Freedom

Excellent autobiography. I knew ABOUT Mandela, of course, but that's not the same as knowing the things he accomplished, the struggles he faced and all that. It took me a long time to get through it, despite picking it up pretty consistently - it's a hefty read by dint of the subject matter even though Mandela tells it in a way that is mostly very easy to follow. (Though there are a lot of organizations with acronyms for names, and quite a lot of names of fellow prisoners, guards, lawyers, government officials from various political parties, etc. Some of the people are easy to follow as they pop up again and again throughout the narrative, but others only come up a few times and sometimes I lost track of who was who, other than whether they were anti-apartheid or oppressor.) The story of their fight for freedom and one-person-one-vote elections was fascinating, as were the stories of their legal cases, the prisons they occupied, and how they mentally survived 27 years there for their political beliefs. (Because of course, not knowing the history, I didn't know that Mandela had a whole host of fellow political prisoners who were there at the same time, which was real interesting.)