Keeping America Sane

By Ian Robert Dowbiggin,

Book cover of Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880 1940

Book description

What would bring a physician to conclude that sterilization is appropriate treatment for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped? Using archival sources, Ian Robert Dowbiggin documents the involvement of both American and Canadian psychiatrists in the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. He explains why professional men and women…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Keeping America Sane as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

It is important when trying to understand eugenics in Canada to compare how it played out in this country to its trajectory elsewhere. This helps us understand what the commonalities were in the ideas and also to see how and where specific environments resulted in local incarnations of these ideas. Dowbiggin does this for us with great insight by writing comparatively about psychiatry and eugenics in Canada and the U.S. I knew that psychiatrists had enthusiastically taken up the eugenic cause but this book explains really well how and why this happened on both sides of the border, showing us…

From C.'s list on how eugenics came to Canada.

Want books like Keeping America Sane?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Keeping America Sane.

Browse books like Keeping America Sane

Book cover of Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization, and the Politics of Choice
Book cover of Growing a Race: Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism
Book cover of The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of Defective Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,347

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in mental disorders, Canada, and eugenics?

Mental Disorders 182 books
Canada 451 books
Eugenics 23 books