Nelson Mandela was a great man. This is a great book about his life. It's written in an accessible way and his ghostwriter apparently did 70+ hours of interviews, many of which are apparently available to be listened to and I'd be very interested in hearing some of Mandela's own words.

This book really confronted my ignorance on Mandela, apartheid, and South Africa in general. I knew the barest of bare bones, but nothing of substance at all and Mandela explains a lot of things very well. It gives you a great picture of what black people in South Africa were subjected to for so many years.

This book also does a fantastic job of capturing the politics and the various parties and people in political power. It's a complicated structure, but Mandela simplifies it where necessary so that even those who are very ignorant of the political situation can understand the different roles.

It is a political autobiography, so he obviously wrote with the intent of making himself look good, which is not an attempt to throw shade on Mandela. That's just something that comes with the genre. You gloss over some of the darker bits. It makes me want to read more broadly on the subject so I learn more than just this one (albeit incredibly important) perspective.

I highly recommend this. It's a great book about a great man's life with so much important information. It's a very valuable resource on fighting for human rights.

I don't understand why you wouldn't hire a South African audiobook narrator if you want the book narrated with a South African accent. I understand that Michael Boatman is very famous and great at audiobooks, but you can hear his terrible fake accent changing constantly throughout the books- sometimes her rolls his Rs, sometimes he does a soft British R, sometimes he does a standard hard American R (an easy example, but you could tell with other pronunciations too). Sometimes those things would change from sentence to sentence. Just hire a South African.