Invictus Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation

Soon to be a major motion picture from Academy Award(r)--winning director Clint Eastwood, starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman. After being released from prison and winning South Africa's first free election, Nelson Mandela presided over a country still deeply divided by fifty years of apartheid. His plan was ambitious if not far-fetched: Use the national rugby team, the Springboks- long an embodiment of white supremacist rule- to embody and engage a new South Africa as they prepared to host the 1995 World Cup. The string of wins that followed not only defied the odds, but capped Mandela's miraculous effort to bring South Africans together in a hard-won, enduring bond.

John Carlin is senior international writer for El Pa+¡s, the world's leading Spanish language newspaper, and was previously the U.S. bureau chief for The Independent on Sunday. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Wired, Spin, and Cond+¬ Nast Traveler.