Gandhi before India

From this book, I learned some surprising things about Gandhi's work in South Africa. For example, I did not know that Chinese activists joined Gandhi in his Satyagraha in South Africa. It is quite amazing to learn how thousands of people, including Chinese, Tamils, Gujaratis, Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, etc., all willingly went to jail under Gandhi's leadership. The author succeeds in giving us a good social portrait of the times. I would have liked to learn more about Gandhi's childhood, but I think it is not the author's fault that historical material is hard to come by for that time period. Overall, I liked this book and recommend it!

Scholars of Gandhi will probably appreciate the multitude of small details more than someone like myself who wanted to learn about Gandhi's life as an activist in South Africa in a more general way. The details became too much for me to stay focused and I finally closed the book for good at about 40% of the way through it.