I bought this book at a used book shop in Nice, France on February 1, 2005.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I read it about a month after I read Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela so it was interesting to compare the lives of these two men. Central to both books is whether violence is a legitimate means to achieve goals of social justice. Mandela resisted for a long time, but eventially decided that non-violence is not a goal in itself, but a preferable technique to achieve one's goals. Mandela did have doubts about this, though; and seems to up to the present day. Ghandi decided non-violence was a goal in itself and that it would eventually lead to achieving one's goals, however much longer it may take. I found both books as nerve-racking and absorbing as any imaginative work of fiction I've ever read.

Also, don't be put off by the fact that Louis Fischer's biography of Ghandi was published in the 1950s. I wondered if I would find his views outdated, but that wasn't at all the case, in fact. Actually, Ghandi was murdered only three years or so before this book was published so the freshness of it (and the fact that Fischer himself interviewed Ghandi on numerous occasions) adds a lot to the book.

RELEASE NOTES:

J'ai échangé ce livre-ci avec quelques autres livres pour Millenium People au "The Cat's Whiskers", un magasin de livres anglais à Nice. Ce livre est maintenant à vendre là-bas.

I exchanged this and a few other books for Millenium People at "The Cat's Whiskers", an English book store in Nice. This book is now for sale at the shop.