Can you imagine growing up in a segregated South Africa, under the burden of apartheid? What if you were a member of a royal family, but were expelled from a prestigious university for taking part in a protest — and then returned home to find a marriage had been arranged for you?

This was the early life of the man who would win the Nobel Peace Prize at age 75 and become South Africa’s first democratically elected president at age 76. The young Nelson Mandela changed his opinion of the government he once trusted and dedicated himself to changing the future of all South African people, regardless of the color of their skin.

This book will introduce you to Nelson Mandela before he became an international icon for integration and peaceful coexistence. You’ll learn about his upbringing, his time as a lawyer, his arrest, his 27-year political imprisonment, and his presidential election. You will come to appreciate the man who called himself “fundamentally an optimist” for his charisma, style, and peaceful nature, and you’ll learn about how, even as a man in chains, he fostered a community that believed in desegregation and the open exchange of ideas.

Mandela’s patience and determination to effect political change stayed with him throughout his life, from his days as a idealistic college student defying tribal authority to his later years as an eloquent public speaker, philanthropist, and international icon of peace.