After the caretaker presidency of William Tubman (d. 1971), William Tolbert took office and continued the "kleptocracy" of corruption, patronage and nepotism. The elite "settler" class of Americo-Liberians ruled the country from a position of power and privilege that they had no intention of relinquishing, even though it bred a broad and deep hostility among sixteen indigenous and dirt poor ethno-linguistic groups. Like most of Africa, slavery and colonialism left a bitter and complex legacy in Liberia. But as Sirleaf demonstrates in her autobiography, there was far more than luck to her improbable triumph over personal and political obstacles that included an abusive husband, imprisonment, house arrest, exile, and one of the longest and most violent descents into political anarchy on the continent. And not only her native Liberia, but the entire world, is all the better because of her. "I have been one of the lucky ones," writes Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (b. 1938), Africa's first woman president, in the very last sentence of her remarkable memoir. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 353pp.
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