The most recommended books on eugenics

This was the first book to introduce me to the relation between race studies, eugenics, and archaeology.

It was quite a revelation: I was volunteering at the Petrie Museum at the time, and the book uncovers the dodgy relationship between Petrie and Francis Galton.

It was pivotal in transforming the ways I looked at familiar places: it reminded me that places I called home, like the Petrie Museum but also the Louvre, have been very exclusionary to many. It taught me to look differently at places I navigate on a regular basis, to look for the other story.

You’ll then have to listen to the Bricks + Mortals podcast on the history of UCL buildings, and your wanders in Bloomsbury won’t be the same again.

It can be incredibly frustrating to try to talk about how broken the mental healthcare system is (especially in the United States). Most people have no frame of reference for it.

Similarly the impact mental illness can have on family and loved ones is, for many, uncharted territory. Enter No One Care About Crazy People.

Powers expertly weaves the history of mental healthcare in America together with the story of his family’s battles with schizophrenia. The result is a heartbreaking and beautiful and horrifying and eye-opening book that leaves you better equipped to have those frustrating conversations. 

I’m not going to lie to you, this is a hard one to read. It hurts. That said, it is one of my all-time favorite books.

This begins as an exceptional introduction to genetics and the very latest technological and statistical methods. What sets this book apart, however, is the understanding of what genetics and inheritance mean, which took my breath away. 

For more than a century, the crusty old nature-nurture false dichotomy has dominated human understanding of inheritance and - especially - the genetics of behavior. Despite many valiant attempts, genetics has seldom managed to escape the legacy of eugenics and the towering figures of Galton, Pearson and Fisher. Harden provides a refreshing, coherent, powerful case that liberates genetic knowledge from eugenics, and places a modern understanding of genetics and what she calls ‘genetic luck’ at the centre of any program to improve society and achieve equality.

Both geneticists and those who think that only environmental (nurture-based) or technological solutions can improve societies have a lot to learn from this book. Hopefully, it will finally… show more.

This book deservedly won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. It is simultaneously a history of autism, and a history of the concept of neurodiversity. It reaches back to the origins of the internet and the dark history of eugenics in the Holocaust. And it reaches forward into contemporary ideas about respecting, accepting, and celebrating differences in the mind, particularly of autistic people.

This book traces the connections between horse breeding, biological science, international commerce, and foreign relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Derry focuses on three large topics: the breeding of large draft horses, international military horse markets, and government breeding programs. The horse market was essentially a warhorse market. I love how this book shows that looking at something like horse breeding leads to a better understanding of things like political economy and foreign relations. Breeding beliefs and practices reveal a lot about society and culture, and the military material is fascinating. I also recommend the chapter on horse culture that looks at literature and painting (the author is herself an accomplished painter).

A fan of stories inspired by true events, I devoured this book. Civil Townsend is a Black nurse in post-segregation Montgomery, Alabama, who blows the whistle on a cruel injustice done to her patients.

She is tenacious, stubborn, and fierce about her beliefs and profession. While she strives to do right by her patients at the family planning clinic, she cannot stand by silently when she sees all the wrongs in their lives. The story follows her career from start to finish/retirement, and I found myself rooting for her at every step, every naysayer, and every obstacle along the way.

This book should be made into a movie! Yes, it is written by two legal historians and yes, it is about a court case, but it reads like a thriller. Great characters, twists and turns in the plot, prime ministers, feisty ladies, the whole nine yards. It is the story of how a British court decided that women were “persons” and thus could be appointed to the Canadian Senate. At the time, only certain “persons” were eligible and only men were considered “persons.” It is not about eugenics, but the events take place around 1929 and the authors do a great job of explaining what Canadian society was like then. This helps us appreciate why the ground was so fertile for eugenic ideas and why women like the “persons” involved in the story were also eugenicists.

This is the most important book to read if you want to understand (a) eugenics generally and (b) how it played out in Alberta, the part of Canada where these ideas got the most traction. Dyck is a great historian, but even better, she does not forget that history is about real people. Her history is detailed and thorough, but it is not dry. She uses all kinds of interesting sources including courtroom evidence and personal records to bring the issues to life. She also moves the story forward by writing about abortion in the 1970s and 1980s and shows us in a very thought-provoking way the connections between eugenic “fitness” and our notions of “disability” today.

This tale of two African demigods bound together in a centuries-long exploitative relationship was a revelation to me. Wild Seed is an arresting allegory for slavery, eugenics, and dehumanization, but it’s also a large-hearted and sometimes tender work of fantasy. (Or is it science fiction?)

Several of Butler’s works—for example, Kindred and Parable of the Sower—deal directly with class and inequality. But nowhere does Butler handle those themes with greater artistry than in this book.

This is a book about how eugenic ideas were popularized in early movies. It focuses on one particular movie called The Black Stork which tells the true – and shocking – story of Harry Haiselden, a Chicago physician who was accused of allowing the deaths of so-called “defective” babies in the late 1910s. The book also includes fascinating background about the movie industry at the time, as well as about Pernick’s hunt for a copy of this old film. While it is not about Canada, it nevertheless really helps us understand the way eugenic ideas came before the public and their important relationship to pop culture. It is also a very engaging read which introduced me to the fun of learning about old movies.