Where It All Goes Down
India, England, South Africa: 1869-1921
Put "world traveler" on the list of reasons why Gandhi is awesome.
Mohandas starts off in India with his family but takes the huge step of moving to England (in defiance of his caste—no biggie) to study law. Then, he takes another big step by going to South Africa to work for a law firm. Finally, his mentor Gokhale advises him to travel around India in order to better understand the country before trying to make any changes in his homeland.
Gandhi travels throughout India by train and tells us about the hardships third-class passengers face. We're not given a lot of scenic details of these various locales, however; the focus is squarely on Gandhi's ideals, beliefs, and various ethical experiments.
The time frame of this book is approximately from his birth on October 2, 1869, to 1921, the point when he decides not to continue his story because his life is already well known and because he'd have to violate living people's privacy to explain his political experiments. (Trivia time: Gandhi lived until his assassination in 1948, meaning he lived long enough to see India's freedom.)
Inspired by one of his fave books, Unto This Last, Gandhi seeks the simple life of handicraft and rural living, so his narrative isn't huge on technical advancement. There are trains and ambulances, but he doesn't fly when he travels. He's not listening to Jazz Age hits, and he's not spending a lot of time chatting on the newfangled telephone or watching motion pictures.
So, reading his autobiography today provides a feeling of reading history, but it also gives us a sense of the timelessness of Gandhi's themes and ideology—compassion, non-violence, and self-restraint aren't exactly virtues that are locked into a certain time period, after all.