2. (opinion on Mandela's childhood memoirs)

I thought that this excerpt was actually very interesting.  To me, it was neat to see what figures and obstacles impacted Nelson as a child, and how he was prepared for the figures and obstacles he would encounter as a young man and an adult.  When you look back to Nelson's past and look at the people in his life who had a hand in his upbringing, you can really see how he got some of the characteristics that ended up driving him to salvage the future of an entire country.  I thought one of the most interesting points of his childhood was how the actions of his father changed his early life.  His father's quality of rebelliousness (one that we can certainly observe in Nelson himself), ended up leaving the family broke, but his earlier actions of kindness towards the to-be-chief wound up leaving Nelson with not only a great childhood education, but also a continuous observation of democracy in action.  When you look back on the factors that affected him under the influence of the chief, you can understand why he was striving for the ideal democracy: he had seen it firsthand!