THE RAINBOW PEOPLE OF GOD

This chronologically arranged collection of speeches, writings, and letters by Nobelist Desmond Tutu, Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, offers some gripping primary source material from the battle against apartheid. In the first selection of the volume, a letter dated May 6, 1976, Tutu, then dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg, asks Prime Minister John Vorster, ``How long can a people, do you think, bear such blatant injustice and suffering?'' The book ends with a prayer given by Tutu at Nelson Mandela's inauguration as the South African president on May 10, 1994. What emerges is a documentary history (albeit in only one voice) of the protracted death of apartheid and an affirmation of nonracial democracy by a man whose political acts are emphatically motivated by his Christian faith.