Olivia Coolidge has written several books on important political movements, dealing with those who struggled to change the political conditions of their times. The Statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln can serve as the source of several interesting points of comparison between the strife of America during the Civil War years and India's turmoil approaching the day of liberation from colonial rule. Reading Coolidge's biography of one of Gandhi's adversaries, Winston Churchill and the Story of Two Wars, provides another perspective on Anglo-Indian relations. Readers of Gandhi might also be interested in reading Coolidge's Tom Paine, Revolutionary; Women's Rights: The Suffrage Movement in America; and Makers of the Red Revolution.

Readers looking for a complement to Coolidge's biography will be interested in the 1982 film Gandhi, based on the writings of Louis Fischer. This 3-hour, 20-minute production won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and...