By W.E. Mueller

Gordon Brown is a name that hasn't yet etched itself into the American political vernacular. Brown, however, holds down a job whose predecessors include Pitt, Disraeli, Balfour, Gladstone, Churchill and Thatcher. He is prime minister of England — successor to Tony Blair — a position, under any circumstances, requiring courage.

In his introduction to "Courage," Brown recalls being given, at the age of 10, an encyclopedia of 20th century history, wherein were recorded great deeds, such as Shackleton's Antarctic adventure.

Of all the stories, the one he admired most was that of Edith Cavell, a nurse during World War I. It was Cavell's courage that inspired, many years later, this volume about eight individuals who withstood "social disapproval, danger, physical pain and even the risk of death" to sustain a "personal belief and moral purpose."

Brown selects three women and five men: Cavell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Raoul Wallenberg, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Cicely Saunders and Aung San Suu Kyi.

I liked the story of Wallenberg, a Swedish citizen working in Hungary during World War II, who managed to save thousands of Jews, only to disappear behind Russian lines and whose fate remains unknown.

Brown's narrative around each person is better than his conclusion chapter, which is an attempt to define courage. He reaches back to Socrates' conversation with Laches. Their discussion ends with courage being assimilated in the "nature of humankind," which is innately good, and becasue courage is good, we are naturally drawn to it.

Brown suggests three classifications for courage:

— Career courage found in policemen, firefighters, soldiers and paramedics.

— Situational courage, exemplified by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11.

— Brown's heroes, however, are in the third category: "sustained altruists, those who have put themselves at risk over a prolonged period of time because doing otherwise would have been to betray deeply held principles."

The brief story of these eight courageous people is well-crafted, void of sentimentality and full of British stoicism. While Brown struggles for a precise definition of courage, he nails our admiration of those courageous:

"We are drawn to them and revere them because through their actions, they open up the possibility of hope in times of cynicism, dignity in times of degradation, and purpose in times of despair."

Roughly 50 years ago, John F. Kennedy penned his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Profiles in Courage." It, too, singled out eight individuals, all male, all Americans. Kennedy's work has become a classroom classic.

Brown's work — worldlier and more inclusive — would be a good supplement to Kennedy's. It is a "glimpse of the nobility of which humanity is capable."

W.E. Mueller writes from Chesterfield.

British prime minister Brown profiles eight paragons in this warm, plainspoken volume of moral homiletics. Three of his subjects faced the 20th century's greatest test of courage, the Germans in the two world wars: Edith Cavell, an English nurse shot by the kaiser's troops for helping fugitive Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who was hanged after speaking out against Hitler; and Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from annihilation. Latter-day martyrs include Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and imprisoned Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Rounding out the roster are Robert Kennedy, saluted in part for his early embrace of a New Laboresque “Third Way” politics, and Cicely Saunders, who fought a callous medical establishment to found the hospice movement. Brown touches on personal idiosyncrasies—Bonhoeffer's soul-searching, Wallenberg's bravado, Kennedy's rivalry with his older brothers—to illuminate his subjects' actions, but dwells on the blunt fact of their readiness to act on principle regardless of safety. There's not much deep psychological insight, but what makes Brown's accounts inspiring, and occasionally moving, is precisely that his heroes' actions speak for themselves. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Apr.)