Read Wild Swans

Mandela's autobiography from the Transkei to Robben Island to the presidency.

From Detroit Red to Mecca, told to Alex Haley in the year before his assassination.

Puyi from the Forbidden City to a Beijing garden, shot inside the real palace.

Michelle Obama from the South Side of Chicago to the White House.

Spiegelman's father in Auschwitz, Jews as mice and Nazis as cats; the only comic with a Pulitzer.

A boy in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, drawn by a survivor; the manga on the bomb.

Zweig's memoir of Vienna before 1914 and Europe after, finished the day before his suicide.

Orwell fights in the Spanish Civil War, is shot through the throat and sees the revolution betrayed.