With a macabre beginning, this book starts out strong. The writing is engaging, the content is fascinating. Grave robbing has always been an interesting topic for me, the added racial factors make this text even more relevant. However, the farther along you read, the more tedious and dry this text becomes. It goes from an enlightening historical text to a dusty legal tome.

While the author has a captiviting voice, this book suffers more from a lack of sound editing. ( )

This is such a difficult book to read. That being said, it is a story that needs to be told. I did find that the book dragged a bit at times. At other times, I had to put it down because I found it emotionally painful and draining.
It is horrific what happened to Bruce Tucker and I am so very angry and sickened that justice was not done. It is terrible what his family had to go through and the obvious pain it obviously still causes his son.
Although I did find the book a bit dry and slow at times, it should be one that everyone should read. It is another example of the racism that African Americans still suffer to this day. We need to be aware of injustices like this if we are serious about ending racism.
I am glad the author wrote this book. I can imagine it must have been difficut to research and it obvious why he wrote the book. I just hope that others do read it, and I also hope that there is something that can be done for Bruce Tucker's son. This may have happened long ago but it is still affecting others to this day. ( )

I won an advance copy of this book through a FirstRead Giveaway. All the thoughts and feelings in this book are entirely my own.

By the title this book, I thought that the main focus would be on heart transplant of a hard working man who was and his family was cheated of any chance to decide of what would done to his heart. The beginning of the book goes into detail about the black bodies dug up from cemetaries to be used by medical student for hands on anatomy training. This is an old custom not unique to the region. It occured in other countries.

But Bruce Tucker , a hard worker at a constuction company had a fall which fracture his skull. He was three storie up from the ground and was taken to a nearby hospital and later transferred to a hospital with a good teaching reputation but also whispered to be very dangerous if you were black and taken there. The beginning of this book had the air of a mystery that the author pursued the answers of several questions that involed many hours of research.

But then the author slipped off the track, he went to a through history of heart transplants. I would have been more interested if I had not just read a different book that told the history of them. I did not mind learning that President Eisenhower loved greasy foods and smoking. But my eyes glazed over when the author went to great detail about the race to get a successful heart transplant. I had been there before. I was greatly relieved when the book returned to Bruce Tucker's brother fight for justice and I was deeply disappointed in the outcome of the trail. The time and the place and the composition of the jury worked against any justice that could been accomplished. I recommend that you are not familiar with the history of that area and the history of heart transplants. ( )

The Organ Thieves is a truly horrific expose on the mistreatment of black people in America, which sadly remains true today. Although Henrietta Lacks has now become a household name thanks to Rebecca Skloot's seminal work The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, there have been many other victims of the systemic racism in medical research whose voices have not been heard. Just two years after the Civil Rights after of 1964, an African American by the name of Bruce Tucker was admitted to Medical College of Virginia after sustaining a serious head injury at his workplace. Less than 24 hours later, Bruce's heart was beating inside the chest of a Caucasian businessman. The Tucker family was never properly informed of: (a) Bruce's admittance to the hospital and (b) the harvesting of his organs. It was only when the mortician prepared Bruce's body for burial did the family realize he was missing his heart and kidneys. Thus launched an independent investigation and a shocking legal battle to determine whether hospitals were deliberately allowing patients of color to die in order to harvest their organs. In addition to focusing on the life and death of Bruce Tucker, the book dives into the early history of racial inequality in the South, medical malpractice in the pursuit of scientific research, and the resulting legal precedents. Chip Jones' writing covers a myriad of topics, some of which were extremely relevant or interesting and others less so. Regardless, Jones brings to the forefront a disturbing topic that deserves more awareness. In light of recent events, I'd like to point out that even now "racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality health care than white people—even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable" (source: National Academy of Medicine). Covid-19, for example, disproportionately affects black communities; African Americans have died at a rate of 50.3 per 100,000 people, compared with 20.7 for whites, 22.9 for Latinos and 22.7 for Asian Americans.

Full disclosure: I received an advance reading copy of The Organ Thieves by Chip Jones, and my review is based on an uncorrected proof. This book will be available in bookstores on August 18, 2020. ( )