Nelson Mandela

Spent twenty-seven years in prison, eighteen of them on Robben Island breaking limestone in a quarry that permanently damaged his eyes, and walked out in 1990 to negotiate with the government that had put him there.

Long Walk to Freedom was begun secretly in prison, buried in the garden in sections, and rewritten after some of it was found. It covers the rural Transkei childhood, the law practice, the turn to armed struggle after Sharpeville, and the Rivonia trial where he expected a death sentence and gave a four-hour speech from the dock instead.

He became South Africa's first democratically elected president in 1994 and served one term, which was itself the point. The book is honest about the cost to his family, particularly his children, in a way the statue version of him never is. He was on an American terrorism watch list until 2008.