Ocean State Libraries

"A powerful look at the non-scientific history of "race science," and the assumptions, prejudices, and incentives that have allowed it to reemerge in contemporary science Superior tells the disturbing story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences in the world of science. After the horrors of the Nazi regime in WWII, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide...

G. K. Chesterton's highly influential treatise on one of the most controversial topics of the early twentieth century. When G. K. Chesterton first published Eugenics and Other Evils in 1922, he seemed to be the lone voice of reason against the fashionable concept of selectively breeding a population for "desirable" traits. Though later generations came to associate eugenics with the horrors of the Third Reich, worldwide support for the philosophy...

Eugenics (human ecology) has always understood itself to be part of the struggle for human rights-- those of future generations. John Glad lays out the eugenic thrust of traditional Jewish culture and shows how Zionism itself was conceived as a grand eugenic plan. --From publisher's description.

The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, "Startlingly original." The Washington Post raves, "Brilliantly conceived and executed." A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of

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Although set in the 1950s, the story reveals the traumatic experiences of Lesley's mother during World War II when the Nazis took her son.

The secrets locked in our genes are being revealed, and we find ourselves both enthused and frightened about what that portends. We look forward to curing disease and alleviating suffering--for our children as well as for ourselves--but we also worry about delving too deeply into the double helix. Abuses perpetrated by eugenicists--from involuntary sterilization to murder--continue to taint our feelings about genetic screening. Yet, as Ruth Schwartz...

"In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. As doctors and state officials steadily lost faith in the capacity of asylum care to stem the terrible increase of insanity, they began emphasizing the need to curb the reproduction of the insane. They...

ln 1927, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling so disturbing, ignorant, and cruel that it stands as one of the great injustices in American history. Here, Adam Cohen exposes the court's decision to allow the sterilization of a young woman it wrongly thought to be "feebleminded" and to champion the mass eugenic sterilization of undesirables for the greater good of the country. The 8-1 ruling was signed by some of the most revered figures in American...