Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan

Book excerpt: Bhutto, Wolpert writes, was a charismatic and contradictory man, a microcosmic reflection of Pakistan itself - a nation bond out of division with India which later fell victim to its own internal split with the creation of Bangladesh. Wolpert follows him from his privileged youth in British-ruled India, to his years as a student at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley (where he sported a thin moustache, shiny two-tone shoes, and proved a keen, if rakish, fraternity brother), to Oxford and back to Pakistan. Bhutto climbed to the heights of power with amazing swiftness, winning a seat in the central Cabinet of Pakistan at the unprecedented age of thirty. Wolpert weaves Pakistan's turbulent politics and repeated wars with India together with Bhutto's ambitious maneuvering, tracing his rise to Foreign Minister, the founding of his own political movement, and finally leadership of the nation.