Wendy Kline's lucid cultural history of eugenics in America   emphasizes the movement's central, continuing interaction with popular notions   of gender and morality. Kline shows how eugenics could seem a viable solution to   problems of moral disorder and sexuality, especially female sexuality, during   the first half of the twentieth century. Its appeal to social conscience and   shared desires to strengthen the family and civilization sparked widespread   public as well as scientific interest.  Kline traces this growing public interest by looking at a variety of sources,   including the astonishing "morality masque" that climaxed the 1915 Panama   Pacific International Exposition; the nationwide correspondence of the   influential Human Betterment Foundation in Pasadena, California; the medical and   patient records of a "model" state institution that sterilized thousands of   allegedly feebleminded women in California between 1900 and 1960; the surprising   political and popular support for sterilization that survived initial interest   in, and then disassociation from, Nazi eugenics policies; and a widely   publicized court case in 1936 involving the sterilization of a wealthy young   woman deemed unworthy by her mother of having children.    Kline's engaging account reflects the shift from "negative eugenics" (preventing   procreation of the "unfit") to "positive eugenics," which encouraged procreation   of the "fit," and it reveals that the "golden age" of eugenics actually occurred   long after most historians claim the movement had vanished. The middle-class   "passion for parenthood" in the '50s had its roots, she finds, in the positive   eugenics campaign of the '30s and '40s. Many issues that originated in the   eugenics movement remain controversial today, such as the use of IQ testing, the   medical ethics of sterilization, the moral and legal implications of cloning and   genetic screening, and even the debate on family values of the 1990s. Building a   Better Race not only places eugenics at the center of modern reevaluations of   female sexuality and morality but also acknowledges eugenics as an essential   aspect of major social and cultural movements in the twentieth century.

Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom PDF

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