"For nearly three years ... Stengel collaborated with Mandela on his autobiography and travelled with him everywhere ... Now he has distilled countless hours of intimate conversation with Mandela into fifteen essential life lessons ... he recounts the moments in which 'the grandfather of South Africa' was tested and shares the wisdom he learned ... Woven into these life lessons are remarkable stories - of Mandela's childhood as the protégé of a tribal king, of his early days as a freedom fighter, of the twenty-seven year imprisonment that could not break hum, and of his new and fulfilling marriage at the age of eighty"--Jacket.