1-60286-022-X
PORTRAITS OF BRAVERY IN THE SERVICE OF GREAT CAUSES
What is it that drives some men and women to make difficult decisions and perform stunning acts of courage against the odds when easier and far less dangerous alternatives are open to them? Why is it that some people have the courage to dare?
To answer these questions, Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister, explores the lives of eight outstanding twentieth-century figures. Starting with Edith Cavell, a World War I nurse who tended the wounded in Belgium and helped Allied soldiers escape to England, he goes on to profile the Protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer returned to Nazi Germany from New York in 1940 to lead the Christian opposition against the
Nazi regime. Wealthy businessman Raoul Wallenberg left neutral Sweden in 1944 to try to save the lives of Hungarian Jews in Budapest. All three paid the ultimate price. Telling the stories of great civil rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and Nelson Mandela, Brown considers sustaining
great courage over long periods. And then there is the legacy of Dame Cicely Saunders, who changed our attitudes toward the terminally ill by founding and leading the hospice movement. Finally, he explores the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, who for twenty years, much of that time under house arrest in Rangoon, has led her country’s democratic opposition to military dictatorship, and
continues to do so today.
Bringing his personal reflections to these intimate portraits, Brown illuminates the common threads between these eight icons and in doing so, introduces us to his own inspiring values.
No British Prime Minister since Churchill has written anything quite as good, at least not while in active politics.”
[A] warm, plain spoken volume of moral homiletics…what makes Brown’s accounts inspiring, and occasionally moving, is precisely that his heroes’ actions speak for themselves.”
Well-written and heartfelt...Brown consistently demonstrates the lucid, unwavering, objective eye of a historian....His portraits do not sanctify sociopolitical icons; instead they celebrate ordinary men and women called to extraordinary feats in the service of causes that stirred their passion.”
Very moving and completely uncynical…The purpose of this book is clear: to keep alive this concept of courage so that future generations will learn from the examples of others and be inspired by them.”
What makes [his] exploration of courage so intriguing and the book so readable is its intensely personal character... [It is] an unexpectedly candid act of moral self-examination and deliberation.”
[Brown’s] approach is refreshing…readable and intelligent.”
