Nelson Mandela

South African · b. 1918

Nelson Mandela drafted Long Walk to Freedom in secret on Robben Island, burying the manuscript in the prison garden — 27 years inside, from saboteur to negotiator to the president who invited a former jailer to his inauguration. The autobiography, finished after his 1994 election, settles almost no scores; that restraint, he'd argue, was the strategy all along.