Imbeciles

Utterly horrifying and captivating. Author, Adam Cohen, digs deep to shed light on America's horrifying obsession with eugenics by outlining the supreme court case of Carrie Buck, a young girl who was declared "feeble-minded" and sterilized. At the turn of the twentieth century America's elite were infatuated with the idea of strengthening the American race by practicing eugenics on those undesirables that society wanted to get rid of: imbeciles, criminals, people with physical and mental defects, epileptics, sexually promiscuous women and more. Nazi Germany used America's eugenics rhetoric, research, and court cases as a model for their racial cleansing plan. By the time it was finally considered faux pas and barbaric, more than 70,000 American's had been sterilized, most without their consent or knowledge. Meticulously researched (although sometimes a little bogged down with details on key figures), this book is a scary piece of America's past and very timely as bigotry continues to rise again.