Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf took office as president of Liberia in January 2006, the first woman elected to lead an African country, after fourteen years of civil war had emptied the treasury and wrecked the power supply. She trained as an economist at Madison and then at Harvard, and had worked as Liberia's finance minister, at Citibank and at the United Nations Development Programme. This Child Will Be Great, published by Harper in 2009, covers a childhood in Monrovia and the interior, a marriage she left, two spells in prison under Samuel Doe, and long years of exile. It is candid about her early backing for Charles Taylor, which she has called a mistake; Liberia's own truth commission recommended in 2009 that she be barred from office over it, and the recommendation was never acted on. She shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, and stepped down in 2018 after two terms.