As with most items in the library, they bear Dr. Banda's neat pencil marginal notes, always correcting, challenging or indicating agreement. Heady stuff indeed for the then 14 year old Kamuzu Banda. The single common denominator of those years and, in fact, until today at age 99, is knowledge, learning, an insatiable desire to know, to understand. No matter how busy, as student, physician or Head of State, there was always time to read. This remarkable man's biblioappetite was and is never satisfied.
Nothing is shelved for aesthetics.
All items have been well cared for, but read, annotated, some cross referenced and, in some cases, reread with a note to that effect. Most bear the labels of long gone book stalls and book sellers of Johannesburg, New York, Chicago, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and London. Prices, which he carefully noted in pencil on the front pastedown, are relics of bygone days. His biographical favorites were Gandhi, Churchill, DuBois, Padmore, Chang Kai-Chek, Lister, Pasteur, Disraeli, Napoleon, Aristotle and Gladstone. Certain American Presidents fascinated him, particularly Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.