The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela [Hardcover]

These messages to family, friends, comrades, elected officials and prison administrators reveal a Mandela as vulnerable as any other human.... Mr. Mandelas prison letters underscore isolations other violence: every incarcerated human is stripped of family. Separating a person from his kin is the ultimate expression of state power. I cant help seeing, in the image of Mr. Mandelas daughter begging for her fathers return, the children weeping at our southern border. Considering the solace and strength he took from these folded sheets of paper, its a marvel his captors allowed him any mail at all.... Mr. Mandelas letters tell a story beyond their own words.Heartbreaking and inspiring.... This book confronts readers with the most direct evidence yet of Mandelas intellectual evolution into one of the great moral heroes of our time.... With words as his only ammunition, Mandela fought his case patiently, on lined paper, his eloquence inseparable from his rectitude.It was with considerable delight and relief that I readA necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC's struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC's rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not onlyor even primarilyfor himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book's various sections. A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history's most vital figures.In 1962, when he was arrested, Nelson Mandela, who would become the first black and democratically elected presidenlC¯