By Louis Fischer

This book is the perfect introduction to the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. The book is laid out in three easy sections:

• From Birth To Greatness
• Gandhi in India
• Victory and Tragedy 

The author personally met with Gandhi. The book is immensely informative and well-paced.

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By Sissela Bok (Foreword), M.K.Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi

Amazon.com
Gandhi's nonviolent struggles in South Africa and India had already brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation, and controversy that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself. Although accepting of his status as a great innovator in the struggle against racism, violence, and, just then, colonialism, Gandhi feared that enthusiasm for his ideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding. He says that he was after truth rooted in devotion to God and attributed the turning points, successes, and challenges in his life to the will of God. His attempts to get closer to this divine power led him to seek purity through simple living, dietary practices (he called himself a fruitarian), celibacy, and ahimsa, a life without violence. It is in this sense that he calls his book The Story of My Experiments with Truth, offering it also as a reference for those who would follow in his footsteps. A reader expecting a complete accounting of his actions, however, will be sorely disappointed.

Although Gandhi presents his episodes chronologically, he happily leaves wide gaps, such as the entire satyagraha struggle in South Africa, for which he refers the reader to another of his books. And writing for his contemporaries, he takes it for granted that the reader is familiar with the major events of his life and of the political milieu of early 20th-century India. For the objective story, try Yogesh Chadha's Gandhi: A Life. For the inner world of a man held as a criminal by the British, a hero by Muslims, and a holy man by Hindus, look no further than these experiments. --Brian Bruya

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By Eknath Easwaran

Gandhi the Man tells how Gandhi remade himself from a shy, tongue-tied, average little man to a Mahatma whose life can serve as an inspiration for our own transformation.

From the Publisher
In 1893, Mohandas Gandhi left India for South Africa at the age of 23 a man whose past was full of failure. Ten years later, called a saint even by those who opposed him, he grew to become the acknowledged leader of 400 million Indians in their struggle for independence. How did it happen? As a young man, Eknath Easwaran visited Gandhi not to observe his political style, he states, but, "because I wanted to know the secret of his power." It is this secret that Easwaran reveals to his readers.

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By Nelson Mandela

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political figure of our time, this is the exhilarating story of Nelson Mandela's epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.

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