A comprehensive and engaging survey of Obasanjo's life and career from his birth in 1937 and humble origins to his retirement after 2007. [...] Iliffe's analysis of Nigerian politics makes excellent reading, and underlines just how difficult it is for anyone to manage the Nigerian state.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY
There is little that John Ilife's clear ... Read moreand unvarnished biography [...] fails to uncover.
SURVIVAL: GLOBAL POLITICS & STRATEGY
A nuanced biographical narrative stewed with Nigerian history in global context. [...] This is an imaginative and ambitious study.
THE HISTORIAN
A rich and dispassionate biography [that] offers a revealing and remarkably comprehensive overview of postcolonial Nigerian history.
JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY
Will surely add to John Iliffe's reputation as one of the world's most acclaimed African historians. [...] The book is an ingeniously scripted history taking a thoughtful and often critical approach to governance in Nigeria under Obasanjo.
THE ROUND TABLE
An important new biography. [...] Iliffe's biography is of a statesman but it is also an outstanding study of a half century of Nigerian politics. His book sets an admirably high as well as a new standard for African biography by which the work of his successors will have to be judged.
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW
A scholarly and very highly recommended study of an international figure who has put Nigeria on the course it is today, for better or for worse.
MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
John Iliffe's biography is the most authoritative, comprehensive and well informed account of Obasanjo's rule and personality up to now.
H-SOZ-U-KULT
This is an important examination of possibly the most controversial personality in modern Nigerian politics. The strength of this study is that it is an outsider's calmer examination of a man who evokes such strong emotions that studies of him within Nigeria are necessarily tainted by widespread perceptions of who he is. -
Abdul Raufu Mustapha, University of Oxford Show Less