measured tone, The Shape of the River deserves to be influential in the debate and in litigation over race conscious admissions. The authors command respect because of their professional qualifications, their extensive experience in higher education, and their record of thoughtful discourse about higher education and the needs of the nation. Although people may differ with some of the authors' conclusions, The Shape ofthe Riveradds important and much needed empirical data to the discussion ofrace consciousness in admissions. People can now state with confidence that such policies at selective colleges have led to important benefits to the black students admitted, to their fellow students, and to our society. Courts can take these societal benefits into account when assessing the constitutionality and legality of these admissions practices, and with the data this book provides, courts are not likely to conclude that there are race-neutral means of achieving the same goals. A fresher, more factual consideration of race consciousness in admissions, such as that provided by The Shape of the River, can only help all of us as courts, legislatures, and voters reach decisions on such a vitally important topic. Daniel Steiner Harvard University A Different Death: Euthanasia and the Christian Tradition. By Edward J. Larson and Darrel W. Amundsen. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity P, 1998. Pp. 256. $14.99 (paper). There are many who write about end-of-life options but few who write about the possible origin of those options available within the Christian tradition. This book traces a Christian tradition on suicide to bolster modern arguments against active euthanasia and assisted suicide. The religious discussion against suicide is then extrapolated , in later chapters, to practices that actively cause death when a person requests it and society's struggle with these issues. The Introduction shows that the authors are aware of how difficult it is to define suicide: An entirely objective and consistent definition of suicide will never be made to everyone's satisfaction. The differences are so significant between, for instance, hanging oneself after beingjilted by one's lover, burning oneself to death as a public protest against a government's policies, sacrificing one's lives to save others' lives, and being executed for refusing to renounce one's most deeply held convictions that to label them all as "suicide" and then insist that anyone who approves of any of them approves of all forms of suicide flies in the face of even the most basic logic and common sense. The intention of the authors is not to present current Christian positions about suicide or active euthanasia within the various denominations as they evolved historically , but to show unequivocally that the historical Christian tradition condemns suicide and active euthanasia. This is in sharp contrast to classical antiquity, which tolerated the wish to hasten death and, in some circumstances, permitted someone else to administer the means of death. The authors speculate that what you might think Christianity says about suicide (and by implication, what that means for the practice of active voluntary euthanasia 450 Book Reviews or physician-assisted suicide) is probably incorrect. In the opening chapter of the book an imaginary student is assigned a term paper on the Christian position on active voluntary euthanasia and discovers scholarship which suggests that Christians chose to die for their faith or welcomed death as going to God. The authors' dispute over whether these ideas are indigenous to Christian values is the basis of the next five chapters of the book. The last four chapters comprise a modern discourse on the cases and legal decisions that have shaped the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide in end-of-life care and present the evolution of the present debate and the views of the proponents of pro-life positions. Ofinterest to physicians is a careful tracing of the evolution ofthe physician's role at the bedside of the dying person. Initially there was no mandate to treat persons whose cases could only end in failure for the physician, but by the Reformation physicians were enjoined to remain at the bedside even though no further treatment was useful. In two separate papal documents we see that, by the end of the 12th...