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[SIMG]http://www.startribune.com/media/2006/10/10/15/1mandela1011.standalone.jpg[/SIMG]
Bono Contributes to Mandela Memoir
John Mark Eberhart, McClatchy Newspapers
Mandela's remarkable achievements and sunny outlook come shining through in this hefty coffee-table biography.
In one of his great poems, "The Four Zoas," William Blake wrote, "It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun." For much of Nelson Mandela's life, including more than a quarter-century in prison, the sun wasn't exactly shining, and "triumph" had to be redefined as an exercise of the will and mind.
The South African leader's eventual triumph over apartheid is one of the events chronicled in "Mandela: The Authorized Portrait" (Andrews McMeel, 356 pages, $50), a remarkable book of photographs and text. But more gripping is Mandela's enormous capacity to carry on, for so long, what Blake termed the "mental fight."
And to do it with apparent joy.
"He has a remarkable gift of making us South Africans feel good about ourselves," Archbishop Desmond Tutu says in this volume. "During his presidency, this feel-good factor was at its peak. ... Getting others to see that glass half-full: That alone might serve as a pretty good definition of leadership."
Like the man, the book shows evidence of such leadership. On the surface, there might appear to be several things wrong with it: It is being promoted as "authorized," meaning its subject cooperated. It was done by committee; in addition to the contributions by many photographers, the text was fitted together by various interviewers, writers and editorial consultants. And technically, it's a coffee-table book. Celebrities such as Tutu and U2 singer Bono and former President Bill Clinton contribute their thoughts.
Fine. Now, just as Mandela did with people, go ahead and reject all those labels. The key issue is whether the power of Mandela's personality and the nature of his achievements emerge in these roughly 250 photographs and more than 120,000 words of text. The short answer: Yes. If this is a coffee-table book, the world's coffee tables are about to get very fortunate.
"Mandela" is the product of Andrews McMeel, a Kansas City publisher that competes in a literary world dominated by New York-based firms. In May the company scored a bona-fide public relations hit at BookExpo America in Washington, D.C.
Thousands of booksellers who'd gathered for the annual convention snapped up book bags featuring a reproduction of Mandela's cover. Everywhere you went -- up escalators, down ramps, across lobbies, even out on the sidewalks of D.C. -- you saw his pensive face.
But at that time the book was just a promise. No one knew whether the contents would be a match for the mesmerizing image. It turns out, in this case, that one can judge a book by its cover.
Bono Contributes to Mandela Memoir
John Mark Eberhart, McClatchy Newspapers
Mandela's remarkable achievements and sunny outlook come shining through in this hefty coffee-table biography.
In one of his great poems, "The Four Zoas," William Blake wrote, "It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun." For much of Nelson Mandela's life, including more than a quarter-century in prison, the sun wasn't exactly shining, and "triumph" had to be redefined as an exercise of the will and mind.
The South African leader's eventual triumph over apartheid is one of the events chronicled in "Mandela: The Authorized Portrait" (Andrews McMeel, 356 pages, $50), a remarkable book of photographs and text. But more gripping is Mandela's enormous capacity to carry on, for so long, what Blake termed the "mental fight."
And to do it with apparent joy.
"He has a remarkable gift of making us South Africans feel good about ourselves," Archbishop Desmond Tutu says in this volume. "During his presidency, this feel-good factor was at its peak. ... Getting others to see that glass half-full: That alone might serve as a pretty good definition of leadership."
Like the man, the book shows evidence of such leadership. On the surface, there might appear to be several things wrong with it: It is being promoted as "authorized," meaning its subject cooperated. It was done by committee; in addition to the contributions by many photographers, the text was fitted together by various interviewers, writers and editorial consultants. And technically, it's a coffee-table book. Celebrities such as Tutu and U2 singer Bono and former President Bill Clinton contribute their thoughts.
Fine. Now, just as Mandela did with people, go ahead and reject all those labels. The key issue is whether the power of Mandela's personality and the nature of his achievements emerge in these roughly 250 photographs and more than 120,000 words of text. The short answer: Yes. If this is a coffee-table book, the world's coffee tables are about to get very fortunate.
"Mandela" is the product of Andrews McMeel, a Kansas City publisher that competes in a literary world dominated by New York-based firms. In May the company scored a bona-fide public relations hit at BookExpo America in Washington, D.C.
Thousands of booksellers who'd gathered for the annual convention snapped up book bags featuring a reproduction of Mandela's cover. Everywhere you went -- up escalators, down ramps, across lobbies, even out on the sidewalks of D.C. -- you saw his pensive face.
But at that time the book was just a promise. No one knew whether the contents would be a match for the mesmerizing image. It turns out, in this case, that one can judge a book by its cover.
