Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males by Freeman Hrabowski III, Kenneth Matson, and Geoffrey L. Grieb Oxford University Press, 1998 New York 242 pages Hardcover: $26

Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males relates wonderful stories of parents striving successfully to raise academically high-achieving African American boys who are then encouraged to excel in college and subsequently go on to elite graduate and professional schools in medicine, mathematics, science, and engineering.

The book is filled with the actual words. gathered through extensive interviews, of mothers and fathers saying how they monitored their sons, homework (even when they didn't understand it). set limits on their after school activities, and had high expectations for their academic achievement. There is a "strong commitment to education" running through these families and a "supportive learning environment" in the home. The emphasis on the importance of education was present whether there was a two-parent family or a single-parent family, whether the family was middle class or working class.

Yet many obstacles hinder their achievement. For example, unlike their White counterparts. African American boys are often ridiculed by their peers for showing that they are "smart" in school. As a result, there is a tendency by African American boys not to speak out or excel in school. Additionally, there is the temptation to not choose a college major in the sciences or math. even though the boys may have good grades in these subjects, without encouragement or support from teachers and counselors.

Hence, the need for this book -- whose major purpose "is to identify strategies that parents [and] educators ... may wish to consider as they work with ... young African American males." The book is, more particularly, the story of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, operating since 1989 at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) "for talented African American males interested in research careers in science and engineering."