Martha McNeil Hamilton and Warren Brown built a friendship over more than twenty years of working together at The Washington Post. What is remarkable about their story is not that they are friends in spite of race (Hamilton is white, Brown is black), but that they have shared a life and death journey.

In November 2001, Hamilton gave Brown one of her kidneys and her generous act saved his life and made their friendship more than just a collegial bond. Brown's kidney transplant and how he and Hamilton came to their decisions is the central story of BLACK & WHITE & RED ALL OVER. Yet this memoir of their friendship accomplishes much more.

Both journalists are members of the baby boom generation born in the Jim Crow South. As they write, "We came to the Post in the middle of a revolution." In writing about their individual lives they provide a personal view of segregation, integration, women's integration into the workforce and even AIDS. Though the focus is clearly on their growing friendship and the transplant, these personal vignettes bring the book to life. And as the nation reconsiders policies such as affirmative action, Hamilton and Brown make it clear that they got in the door with such considerations and they stand behind the idea. They are also honest about why management can sometimes fail in carrying out the idea and therefore sour others on its promise: "The management [at the Post] had been so good at discriminating against blacks and women that at first it had a hard time discriminating amongst them."

Other tales, like that of Hamilton's post-divorce depression and Brown's concerns about his son, are more touching than historic. These moments ease the reading and provide buffers to the more complex information about kidney disease, renal failure and the dangerous miracle of organ transplants.

This friendship memoir also raises questions about how we view such bonds. When does the person you've worked with for years become a true friend? And as we spend more and more time at work, whether it's real time or time via email, cell phones and PDA devices, how do we successfully integrate work and family? For Hamilton and Brown, work and family have nearly become one, which created a broad network of support as the two readied for the transplant surgery.

It's unfortunate that a story about friends of different races sharing in this way is still extraordinary. Hopefully Hamilton and Brown are evidence of the existence of more cross-racial and cross-cultural friendships. Otherwise, what kind of revolution was it after all?

--- Reviewed by Bernadette Adams Davis

This is a terrific book....full of inspiration, love, hope....it describes a real, true and enduring friendship...between two unlikely people and how far one friend was willing to go to save the other. But, in the end, the book is about much more than friendship, its about how far we have come as a collective society--without some of the social progress of the last forty years or so, one man's life (and perhaps many more) might have been cut short; as a result of his friendship with a woman from a distinctly different background, he received an organ that has aided in extending his life a bit longer.

Both authors are dynamic, interesting people and the writing style is very accessible.

There is something for everyone in this book, whether you like biography, are interested in race relations, organ transplant, friendship, journalists, civil rights/affirmative action....whether you're a writer, a doctor, or just a friend....this is a book that I believe a lot of different people will treasure.

If your a Cub fan, or a fan of baseball history, you will like this book. It covers the team from their beginnings in the 1800's through the 1945 World Series. Mr. Brown's writing style keeps things moving and indeed interesting. Each chapter focuses on a year or, in some cases, a particular player or event. Cub fans will love reading about the years when the team was no stranger to winning and winning championships!

I love Encyclopedia Brown books! I got hooked on them in 5th grade and I still love them!

For the past year I have been engaged in a lengthy research project on John Brown and his biographers. Robert Penn Warren's John Brown: The Making of a Martyr was written when Warren was just 24 years old, and, although it demonstrates the wonderful literary ability Warren would become famous for, the book should not be used as history; Warren's anti-Brown sentiments are obvious; his tone his extremely condescending, as he take numerous snipes at Brown throughout. Warren criticizes the work of previous Brown biographers, such as Oswald Garrison Villard, but that does not stop him from using Villard as his main source, even copying some of his words nearly verbatim. Warren does make some good points, though, like how Brown created his own martyrdom, and his prose is eloquent. Many readers go for this book because of how well told it is, but for the best, most complete, accurate, unbiased, detailed biography, read Stephen B. Oates' To Purge This Land With Blood. When it comes to research, leave this one alone.

This book does an excellent job of tracing not only John Brown's travels through Harper's Ferry, but also the genesis of his abolitionism.

Fanatic he may have been, but he was a fanatic on the right side of history. Also, there's no indication that Mr. Brown was a horse thief or a meglomaniac, although he did declare bankruptcy and did desire to lead, with the aproval of freed blacks, a provisional territory until slavery had been eliminated from the south.

Apologists for southern slavery, like Steve Quick below (who seems to be a hardcore southern apologist), should remember two words that destroy any moral argument they might muster in support of the antebellum South, and against the actions of John Brown, and later the Union.

The first word, obviously, is "slavery." It is unjustifiable, and any attempts to do so are disgraceful. It's sort of like saying that Hitler built good roads.

The second word is "Andersonville." The absolutely inhumane treatment Union soldiers received at the hands of the Confederates should never be forgotten.

The Harpers Ferry raid was the ember that ignited the Civil War. It was also part of a conspiracy, hidden in history almost as much as it was at the time, involving wealthy, prominant Northerners. Among them were Stowe and even Fredrick Douglas. Brown himself was a horsethief, a murderer, and a meglamaniac. Among the evidence found on his person was the constitution of the "new republic" he would usher in after Southern whites had been slaughtered by his army of freed slaves, naming himself as the new provisional president. This well researched book so completely debunks Brown as anything but a traiterous, intolerant tyrant that it is amazing that even today he can be viewed any other way. This book will raise your awareness to a brand new level, almost as much as it raises your blood pressure.

This is number 21 in the popular series by Donald Sobel. Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, a winning fifth-grader, uses his powers of observation and logic to solve petty crimes and assorted other mysteries in his neighborhood. Aided in some stories by tough, bright Sally Kimball (look out, she hits!), Encyclopedia solves 10 cases here. The stories are formatted similarly: There's a problem (e.g., something is stolen, someone makes a possibly false statement), and Sobel mixes in a few good clues with a lot of dialogue and extraneous information. Brown announces that he has solved the case, and the reader is asked to come up with Brown's solution. Answers are given in the back.

Unlike some books in the series, all but two or three of the stories were solvable without special knowledge or assumptions. Our third-grader, who's quite the intellect himself, said that a few of these mini-mysteries were very hard; some of these stories are more appropriate for kids in upper elementary school grades. Each story is about 5-6 pages long; the solutions are about 1 page. The dialogue doesn't always sound very contemporary, at least not for those living in urban California. Close attention to detail will help the young Holmes in your house.

The bad part about it was it was exactly like the others and it can get boring.Out of all it was good.

This book is about a puzzle: how our souls are connected to our bodies. The book's answer is called nonreductive physicalism.

Chapters 2 and 3, about evolution and genetics, can be skipped. They're too detailed and technical to be thumbnail introductions on those topics, but too philosophically naive to provide useful bridges to the rest of the book.

The authors of the later chapters (especially Murphy) at least appreciate the key issues. Ultimately, however, the book suffers from two major flaws. One is that its message doesn't hang together. The book repeatedly rejects the idea that people are "nothing but their bodies," but it also repeatedly declares that people consist of bodies and nothing else. And the book denies that one can explain people's spiritual lives neurobiologically, but it endorses a research program to do exactly that.

Second, the book is theologically precarious. It shuns the idea of an immaterial soul as incompatible with modern scientific ideas about how the physical world works. But exactly the same considerations will lead one to disbelieve in Biblical miracles, in divine healing from illness, and in the work of the Holy Ghost. The book in fact acknowledges this problem, without offering a solution (pp. 147-148).

Note for philosophy students: A key early mistake in the book (or perhaps a deliberate tactic) is to lump together two rival views, namely reductive and eliminative materialism. From there on, the book constantly declares that it is not reductive about the soul, when what it really means is that it is not eliminative about the soul.

Quite simply, this is an extremely useful book.

It is a decidely Christian rejection of substance dualism, something that has been wanting in a popular yet still academic format for some time now. This book argues persuasively that a dualistic mindset is not only unnecessary, but a real hindrance to Christian thought.

As to the accusations of heresy given by some earlier reviewers - it seems that the reactions were a little ill-reasoned. In particular I would like to respond to Bruno D. Granger. Granger attacks the book because:

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But even much more important, I think that Christian anthropology is fundamental for one of the most basic Christian dogma: the double nature of Christ, both human and divine. Traditionally it was thought that Christ had a human physical body and the third person of the Trinity as soul. But if humans are only physical beings without a (spiritual) soul then Jesus of Nazareth could not have been been both human and divine.

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I don't doubt that many modern Christian dualists also think this way - that Jesus' BODY could not have been the divine "part," it was His SOUL that was the divine nature. However, this is heretical as far as historical Christian Orthodoxy is concerned. it is the christological herey called "nestorianism," splitting the divine and human natures up into two distinct substances. This, naturally, makes the body of Jesus nothing more than human (i.e. not divine at all), and renders the atoning work on the cross totally useless. But the obvious reason to reject this dualistic heresy present by Mr Granger is that it basically denies the incarnation altogether. If the "divine" and "human" parts remained so separate, did God really become man at all? Did the word really become flesh?

Glenn Peoples

People who have actually studied philosophy and are tired of hearing people rave on and on about saving "souls" can read this for direction and sound arguments. It is a good collection of experts in theological, scientific, and philosophical fields that are not trying to push materialism onto you and call it Christianity. These are seminary professors and Christian scholars who have done their homework and are trying to make the corrections necessary to share the faith in today's world. It accentuates religion's key characteristic of a new life in Christ. Makes a great partner to William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience." Theological Anthropology is much overlooked today, and Christians are taking flack. You do not have to believe in evolution, but you cannot deny modern neuroscience and psychology. This book delineates how that can be done.

In the preface of his book, author Oates states it is not his intention to determine the mental capabilities of his subject, abolitionist John Brown. But, he certainly paints a vivid enough picture so the reader can determine for himself if Brown is a crazy old coot, a cold blooded murderer, or a man on a might mission or a combination of all three. I had just read Cloudspliiter by Russell Banks (a fictionalized version of Brown's life-see my review) and it made me want to read a real biography of Brown. If anything, this book made me appreciate Banks' immagination even more. To Purge This Land with Blood is a very detailed account of Brown's life, maybe too detailed. Every character, no matter how inconsequential, is named. And this sea of names and places can be mindboggling. I found much of the book slow going and already knowing the outcome of Brown's life didn't compel me to move on quickly. But, after reading the book, I now believe I now know Brown. And isn't that the purpose of biography?

If you were, like I was, taught that John Brown was not much more than a well-meaning madman then you don't know the John Brown of history. Oates does a great job of dispelling that myth as well as presenting for the first time the full picture, thoroughly footnoted, of the man who may have sparked the Civil War. I have small gripes with some of the text, but none worth mentioning here. Read it and be impressed.

Jesusgate warps time to bring the reader to the investigation of the death of Jesus as it would be done today (good and bad goverment officials plus journalists trying to beat each other to the scoop). Grayson Warren Brown uses his imagination to give a new slant on the Roman politics and the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus. My only disappointment in the book is that the author did not give us a sense of what a Western world would be like if it had experienced all of the history up to the 20th century, but without having yet experienced Jesus.

Never a mormon city found. Show me some ancient north american elephant bones. These guys forged and cast metal right? Show me an iron spear from a nephite? or laminite?. Spelling? I'm sure Blaine M. Yorgason is a genius(under hypnotic spell A.K.A. BYU). But it is impossible to make something out of nothing. Put your beliefs on trail, scrutinize every detail.There lies the truth, not professeing that Joe Smith was a prophet of god like an android every Sunday. If the glove doesn't fit you must acquit.

Don't waste your time with this book. For 170 years now there hasn't been a scintilla of evidence found which substantiates any LDS claim that Christ visited the Americas or that any of the Book of Mormon peoples, cities, histories, etc ever happened or ever existed---except when it is being argued by LDS scholars. Please, please, will any Mormon please recommend even a single book, written by a non-Mormon archeologist or historian, which corroborates ANY Mormon claims concerning the pre-Columbian New World?

The evidence and arguments presented by this book are so compelling that anyone who doubts that Jesus visited America is kidding themself. Surely after reading this Book Alex Loya will need to accept that there is abundant archeological evidence for the history included in the Book of Mormon.