Includes bibliographical references and index.

Map: Apartheid South Africa
Prologue: The Last Hero
Country Boy: 1918-1934
Mission Boy: 1934-1940
Big City: 1941-1945
Afrikaners vs. Africans: 1946-1949
Nationalists vs. Communists: 1950-1951
Defiance: 1952
Lawyer and Revolutionary: 1952-1954
The Meaning of Freedom: 1953-1956
Treason and Winnie: 1956-1957
Dazzling Contender: 1957-1959
The Revolution That Wasn't: 1960
Violence: 1961
Last Fling: 1962
Crime and Punishment: 1963-1964
Master of My Fate: 1964-1971
Steeled and Hardened: 1971-1976
Lady into Amazon: 1962-1976
The Shadowy Presence: 1964-1976
Black Consciousness: 1976-1978
Prison Charisma: 1976-1982
A Family Apart: 1977-1980
Prison Within a Prison: 1978-1982
Insurrection: 1982-1985
Ungovernability: 1986-1988
The Lost Leader: 1983-1988
"Something Horribly Wrong": 1987-1989
Prisoner vs. President: 1989-1990
Myth and Man
Revolution to Cooperation
Third Force
Exit Winnie
Negotiating
Election
Governing
The Glorified Perch
Forgiving
Withdrawing
Graca
Mandela's World
Mandela's Country
Image and Reality

Summary:
The Life of Nelson Mandela is one of the most extraordinary epics of the twentieth century. An almost-forgotten prisoner on Robben Island twenty years ago, apparently doomed to a helpless existence as a victim of apartheid, he not only survived but almost single-handedly saved South Africa from potential chaos, to become one of the most widely admired leaders in the world. Mandela's myth is dazzling; in this biography Anthony Sampson penetrates it to show us the man himself. Mandela is filled with new insights and information. We see how prison, which he and his fellow inmates turned into a kind of unofficial university, gradually transformed Mandela from a headstrong activist into a reflective and consummately skilled statesman. We learn how British and American diplomats cold-shouldered him when support was desperately needed, and about the political infighting, sometimes vicious, that went on between anti-apartheid factions. Particularly fascinating is Sampson's narrative of the incredible negotiations leading to Mandela's release from prison and the eventual collapse of the white regime, when his colleagues feared that he was selling out to the government. At every turn, this book sheds fresh light on the moral dilemmas that Mandela was forced to face again and again in his personal and public lives. In the struggle for freedom for South African blacks, he paid a tragic price, becoming alienated from his wife and remote from his children. Yet he famously retained his humanity, and while Sampson does not conceal Mandela's failings - his stubbornness, his fixed loyalties, his princely manners and detachment - the man who emerges is authentically heroic.