The precipitous rise and controversial fall of a formidable African leader.

Samora Machel (1933–1986), the son of small-town farmers, led his people through a war against their Portuguese colonists and became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique.

Machel’s military successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary hero to the oppressed people of Southern Africa. In 1986, during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under circumstances that remain uncertain.

Allen and Barbara Isaacman lived through many of these changes in Mozambique and bring personal recollections together with archival research and interviews with others who knew Machel or participated in events of the revolutionary or post-revolutionary years.

Allen F. Isaacman is a Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books, including the co-authored (with Barbara Isaacman) Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007, winner of the ASA Best Book Prize and the AHA Klein Prize in African History. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has won fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, among others.

Barbara S. Isaacman is a retired attorney. She has coauthored numerous books with Allen F. Isaacman, including Mozambique’s Samora Machel: A Life Cut Short and the award-winning Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007. She also coauthored, with June Stephen, Mozambique—Women, the Law, and Agrarian Reform and has written numerous law review articles.