McRae, Donald 1961-

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McRae, Donald 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born 1961, in South Africa; immigrated to England.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England.

CAREER:

Writer and teacher.

AWARDS, HONORS:

William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, 1996, for Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, and 2002, for Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Nothing Personal—The Business of Sex, Mainstream Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1992.

Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, Mainstream Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1996.

Winter Colours: Changing Seasons in World Rugby, Mainstream Publishing (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1998.

Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 2003, published as In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, Scribner (New York, NY), 2003.

Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart, G.P. Putnam's Sons (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including London Sunday Times, Guardian Observer, and Esquire.

SIDELIGHTS:

Donald McRae is a white native of South Africa who immigrated to England as a young man in part because of his objection to his native country's policy of apartheid. While living in London, McRae worked as a writer for a number of magazines and newspapers and then branched out into nonfiction books. A number of his books focus on sports, with boxing a particularly favorite topic. McRae's Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens is a dual biography of the sports stars. A reviewer for the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza Web site praised McRae for his "spare, eloquent prose."

When McRae wrote Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, he intended to pay tribute to boxing, his favorite sport since the 1960s. Because of what he observed about the aura of death surrounding the sport and how many boxers were taken advantage of, Dark Trade takes a bleaker turn. The book includes detailed descriptions of a number of matches from many weight classes and eras. Joyce Carol Oates, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, praised McRae for being "emotionally direct" and wrote that the author "brings to the highly charged, obsessive world of professional boxing a novelist's eye and ear for revealing detail and convincingly recalled dialogue."

Boxing also plays a role in McRae's Heroes without a Country. This book looks at the parallels in the lives and careers of two African-American icons of the twentieth century: boxer Joe Louis and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens. McRae believes that although these men were among the first prominent African-American athletes to become international heroes, both also suffered much discrimination in the United States and worked—sometimes unconsciously—to break down such barriers. While Louis made much money as a professional fighter, he ended up owing the International Revenue Service millions of dollars in back taxes. Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, but was not allowed to compete as an amateur athlete after that event and made money by competing in staged races, such as races against horses. McRae wrote his book after he learned that Owens ran against Louis in one such race. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly called Heroes without a Country "powerful and moving." Anthony C. Davis of Black Issues Book Review praised the parallel structure of the book because it shows how alike the lives of Louis and Owen were. Davis wrote that "McRae does an excellent job of shedding light on history that is often glossed over." In a review for Library Journal, Robert Cottrell praised Heroes without a Country, writing: "This dual biography is a terrific read and tells an important story."

McRae turns from sports to medicine with his 2006 title, Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart. Here the author examines a contest every bit as competitive as a sporting event: the race between four different doctors in the 1960s to be the first to transplant a human heart. South African Christiaan Barnard, who died in 2001, became the first to do so successfully in 1967, but Americans Norman Shumway, Richard Lower, and Adrian Kantrowitz were not far behind. Such pioneers risked charges of homicide for taking functioning hearts from brain dead patients; they had to experiment on puppies and stray cats to perfect their techniques. Though Barnard, whom McRae portrays as a yokel with an inferiority complex, became the first to transplant a human heart, the others made significant contributions to medicine, including the balloon pump for heart patients that Kantrowitz developed. A Publishers Weekly contributor called Every Second Counts a "top-notch journalistic feat that elucidates complicated medical procedures." Similarly, Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Labrecque found that McRae "masterfully dissects the brutal compassion of four brilliant rivals on the cusp of history." Donna Chavez, writing in Booklist, commended McRae's book, calling it "much more dramatic than any fiction about its subject could be." A Kirkus Reviews critic also gave the work a positive assessment, concluding: "While the outcome is known from the beginning, the author's account of the experiments and research that preceded it and his focus on the participants make for a dramatic read." And Bruce Reitz, writing for the Lancet, dubbed the same work a "spellbinding and accurate account."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, July-August, 2003, Anthony C. Davis, review of Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, p. 57.

Biography, spring, 2007, Stephanie Alexander, review of Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart.

Booklist, May 15, 2006, Donna Chavez, review of Every Second Counts, p. 13.

Bookseller, November 29, 2002, "Scribner Reprints after McRae Win," p. 6.

Entertainment Weekly, June 2, 2006, Jeff Labrecque, review of Every Second Counts, p. 87.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of Every Second Counts, p. 394.

Lancet, October 21, 2006, Bruce Reitz, "Counting Every Second to Save Hearts and Lives," p. 1411.

Library Journal, July 2003, Robert Cottrell, review of Heroes without a Country, p. 94.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 1, 1998, Joyce Carol Oates, review of Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing, p. 3.

Observer (London, England), September 20, 1992, Donald Trelford, "Nothing Personal"; December 1, 2002, Tony Adams, review of In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, p. 3.

Publishers Weekly, May 12, 2003, review of Heroes without a Country, p. 57; April 17, 2006, review of Every Second Counts, p. 181.

SciTech Book News, September 1, 2006, review of Every Second Counts.

Times Literary Supplement, January 17, 2003, Roland Lloyd Parry, review of In Black and White, p. 28.

Washington Post Book World, August 27, 2006, Gregory Mott, review of Every Second Counts, p. 13.