Beyond My Wildest Dreams

In this memoir, the author sets out on a fascinating journey that takes him back to the simple, rural settings of the tiny island of Barbados where he grew up. The narrative transitions to inner city Brooklyn, during the turbulent 1960s when the civil rights movement was seeking to dismantle the ugly practices of racism in the U.S. The author credits his Barbadian upbringing with his successes in athletics and academics. He provides a unique perspective on what it was like to be one of only a handful of black biochemists conducting discovery research in the pharmaceutical industry during the last three decades of the twentieth century. He documents his contributions to the "war on cancer" initiative, and the effort to develop the first recombinant DNA process for a food ingredient.