Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa

Rating:
Summary: A Great History Book
Review: Anatomy of a Miracle is one of those history books you never forget. It does such a good job putting you there. You feel like you are at the meeting between Mandela and DeKlerk. This is history at its best. Anyone interested in Current Events or the History of South Africa and its transformation from Apartheid and White Rule to One Man One Vote and Democracy needs to read this book. I had no idea that Mandela and the South African government had been in negotiation long before Mandela's release. I also had no idea how well Mandela used his ability to speak Afrikaaner and his knowledge of Afrikaaner History to while negotiating to end Apartheid. You see the challenges DeKlerk, Mandela, and all of South Africa had to overcome. And they did. This is a short book, but after reading this you will become an expert on the events that led to the end of Apartheid and the beginning of Democracy in South Africa. This is a great book.

Rating:
Summary: A Great History Book
Review: Anatomy of a Miracle is one of those history books you never forget. It does such a good job putting you there. You feel like you are at the meeting between Mandela and DeKlerk. This is history at its best. Anyone interested in Current Events or the History of South Africa and its transformation from Apartheid and White Rule to One Man One Vote and Democracy needs to read this book. I had no idea that Mandela and the South African government had been in negotiation long before Mandela's release. I also had no idea how well Mandela used his ability to speak Afrikaaner and his knowledge of Afrikaaner History to while negotiating to end Apartheid. You see the challenges DeKlerk, Mandela, and all of South Africa had to overcome. And they did. This is a short book, but after reading this you will become an expert on the events that led to the end of Apartheid and the beginning of Democracy in South Africa. This is a great book.

Rating:
Summary: Informative, interesting, and impartial
Review: I bough the hardcover version of this book when leaving South Africa, and I never regretted it.

The author describes real-life events with plenty of hard facts, documentation, and insight. It's obvious that the author has done research about the stuff she's writing about. It's also very pleasant to see first hand information, and accounts of her interviews with most prominent figures in the SA politics of the last half-century.

And the chapers are delimited with short epic stories (e.g. a 1-page description of a peasant family in Transvaal) which are Absolutely Lovely.

This book immerses you in the realm of SA politics, culture, and conflict, and contains a lot of good reasoning, and analysis. In fact, some of the conclusions of this book regarding apartheid can be applied to conflicts outside Africa.

Furthermore, this is no extended and monotonous cry for black rights in the white South Africa. The author examines the situation from every point of view, including the short economical success of the apartheid, the deteriorating SA economy in the last decade, and the challenges that free society faces.

But make no mistake, the author doesn't have even the slightest taint of white supremacy, or anything like it. She's well grounded in her beliefs, including free speech, equal human rights, and universal suffrage.

This book, its illustrations, and the pictures drawn in your mind by the text are fantastic...

Rating:
Summary: Insightful and dramatic!
Review: Reads like a cloak and dagger thriller at times. This is a riveting account of the end of apartheid and the birth of democracy in a society that should be, by all rights, engaged in civil war at this time. Instead, Ms. Waldmeir gives us the reasons, historically and diplomatically, as to why this amazing transition took place in relative peace. She tries to give a fair representation of the roles of all the major players in this incredibly complex real life drama. I found the writing to be very insightful as an academic work while at the same time it was told as the dramatic, tension filled drama that the story truly is.