During the 1960s and 1970s, Tanzania enjoyed the reputation of offering the most sincere and well-developed of all variants of African socialism. This reputation was closely linked to the standing of Julius Nyerere (1922–99), who served as president of Tanzania from 1961 to 1985. His death in October 1999 was marked by worldwide expressions of respect and affection. In Dar es Salaam, an estimated one million mourners said goodbye to Nyerere, whose body was laid out in the national stadium before being buried in his home village of Butiama. Tanzania's then president, Benjamin Mpaka, one of Nyerere's political foster sons, ordered a thirty-day mourning period. Many commentators agreed that among African politicians, only Nelson Mandela surpassed Nyerere in terms of integrity and independence, his statesmanship praised by numerous world leaders. More critical obituaries, however, referred to the disastrous outcome of social experiments initiated by Nyerere that drove the country towards economic ruin. They also reminded the public of the violations of human rights, which regularly took place during his rule. In today's Tanzania, Nyerere is still by and large a highly popular figure, representing a kind of gold standard of morality in the political arena.

From his early career onwards, Nyerere attracted considerable attention from both journalists and scholars. However, among the huge amount of literature dealing with him and his activities, there is still no in-depth scholarly biography. Much of the literature is characterized by a rather hagiographic tone and one comes away with an impression of Nyerere as a far-seeing superman who could do little wrong. Thomas Molony's authoritative study of Neyere's early years, covering the three decades from his birth to his return to Tanganyika in 1952 after graduation from the University of Edinburgh, now partly closes this historiographical gap. The author offers a detailed and balanced account of Nyerere's formative or ‘pre-political’ years as he progressed from village to school to university abroad, supplemented by references to his years as a statesman. Molony portrays Nyerere with considerable respect, but is very much aware of the ambiguities that characterized his protagonist, who ‘while he was a modest man … also had sufficient ego to lead’ (7). Nyerere carefully cultivated his own image as the humble and approachable leader of the people, but as president rather often displayed a paternalistic know-all manner.

Molony does not attempt to systematically revise all images of Nyerere dear to his admirers, but rather meticulously supplements the sparsely informed and mostly uncritical accounts of Nyerere's early life and offers insights into what could have formed, and informed Nyerere's later political thought and action. The great strength of the study lies in its sound empirical basis. The author unearthed hitherto unused documents from a variety of archives, interviewed numerous people including Nyerere's widow and son, and deeply engaged with Nyerere's own library. This is old school historical research at its best, although Molony's considerable love for details is partly at the expense of more analytical insights. He also sticks too much to Nyerere and the Tanganyikan context, while it would have been useful to employ a broader comparative perspective on his protagonist's years of wandering and learning. For example, the author shies away from drawing some general conclusions on colonial education or the role of the African diaspora in the UK for the shaping of African nationalism after the Second World War.

The book is organized chronologically. Each chapter represents stages of Nyerere's early life. Nyerere's educational and professional career during the colonial period displays patterns that numerous African bureaucrats and politicians of late colonial Tanganyika shared in one way or another. After he had obtained his Diploma in Education at Makerere College (Uganda) in 1945, Nyerere returned to Tanganyika where he joined the staff of St Mary's College, a new Catholic secondary school in Tabora, as a teacher for English and Biology. Soon he became secretary of the local branch of the Tanganyika African Association (TAA) and thus gained some experience in political practice. However, Nyerere still felt the urge to continue his studies and was awarded a scholarship. He enrolled at Edinburgh University for a general arts degree in 1949. The three and a half years he spent in the United Kingdom were, as Molony shows, extremely critical in further forming his political attitudes. Back again in Tanganyika, Nyerere took a teaching position at St Francis's College at Pugu near Dar es Salaam, a secondary school run by the Roman Catholic Church. He soon resigned and entered into full-time politics. At this point Molony's account ends. The book presents a complex and human portrait of Nyerere as a young man and offers most welcome facts and reflections about one of the most remarkable politicians of twentieth-century Africa.