Week 8 Assignment 4 You should try: Book Talks

The Other Wes Moore

Monday, February 7, 2000... 11 a.m. Pikesville, MD. It's an ordinary quiet morning for off duty police officer Sgt. Bruce Prothero. He is working his part-time job as security for J. Brown Jewelers. That peace is about to be broken by four young thugs. A brazen smash and grab robbery is going down. Troy and Donald White, the Moore brothers, Richard and Wes, are looking for an easy score and they will get it by any means necessary. That means...means blood.

Moments later Bruce Prothero, veteran Baltimore County police officer, father of five is dying alone on a cold concrete parking lot.

Fast forward several months... a former Marine, investment banker and Rhodes Scholar, reads an article that grabs him. It's about a cop killer. A killer from Baltimore, he too is from Baltimore. Oddly enough they are the same age, but most intriguing... they share the same name...Wes Moore. How did he end up here and the other Wes Moore ended up there? Wes must meet Wes. Wes Moore must understand why the other Wes Moore ended up a killer and he ended up aide an to Condoleeza Rice.

This is the story of two young African American men who started life in same place, but somewhere in time and space each took different paths.

Do you like Urban Fiction? Are you into social issues? Don't miss this book!


The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

She never knew it, but she would lead doctors and scientist to discoveries that only Science Fiction writers of the 1950's could have imagined. Poor, uneducated and living in a segregated Baltimore a black woman, Henrietta Lacks, would die of cervical cancer in 1951.Without her or her family's knowledge samples of her tumor were taken. The cells would become known as the HeLa cells and they would change our world forever.

HeLa cells would be used to develop the vaccine for Polio, cloning research and help to launch a research industry worth billions. The HeLa would spread throughout the world and eventually into outer space. And her descendants would never see a dime.

If you like medical stories from Robin Cook or if you are into social issues don't miss this book.