Available as a Kindle eBook. Kindle eBooks can be read on any device with the free Kindle app.

Share <Embed>

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Follow the author

Edwin Black

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race Hardcover – 23 July 2003

by Edwin Black (Author)

281 ratings

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle Edition

"Please retry"

£17.79

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

£100.00

£89.95

Hardcover, 23 July 2003

—

£826.07

£79.95

Paperback

"Please retry"

£27.00

£36.26

Genetics is in the news. What is not in the news are its origins in a racist twentieth century pseudoscience called eugenics, which was based on selective breeding. In 1904, the United States launched a large-scale eugenics movement that was championed by the medical, political and religious elite. History has recorded the horrors of ethnic cleansing, but until now, America's own efforts to create a master race have been largely overlooked. In War Against The Weak, investigative journalist, Edwin Black, reveals that eugenics had an incredible foothold in America in the early twentieth century, and was in fact championed and funded by America's social, political, and academic elite. Even more shocking, Black traces the flow of ideas, research, and money from Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island) to Germany, in the process proving that it was America's eugenics programme that gave Hitler the scientific justification to escalate his virulent anti-Semitism into all-out genocide.

Print length

372 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Nation Books
Publication date

23 July 2003
Dimensions

15.3 x 4.4 x 22.9 cm
ISBN-10

1568582587
ISBN-13

978-1568582580
See all details

Special offers and product promotions

Amazon Business : For business-exclusive pricing, quantity discounts and downloadable VAT invoices. Create a free account
Also check our best rated Biography reviews

Highly rated by customers

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Julia Boyd
629
Paperback
£8.20
In stock.
Antony Cyril Sutton
114
Paperback
£9.45
In stock.
Thomas Ligotti
551
Paperback
£9.99
In stock.
Alison Weir
755
Paperback
£5.95
In stock.
Yasha Levine
119
Paperback
£8.19
In stock.
Jonathan Calvert
274
Hardcover
£15.32
In stock.

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Jerry Bergman
20
Paperback
£13.50
Only 2 left in stock (more on the way).
Mr Mark Halliday Sutherland
6
Paperback
£14.95
In stock.
Edwin Black
12
Paperback
£20.35
In stock.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
108
Paperback
£4.36
In stock.
Stefan K¿hl
21
Paperback
£18.99
In stock.
Nicholas Wright Gillham
2
Hardcover
£24.00
Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).

Product details

Publisher : Nation Books; Tuttle ed. edition (23 July 2003)
Language : English
Hardcover : 372 pages
ISBN-10 : 1568582587
ISBN-13 : 978-1568582580
Dimensions : 15.3 x 4.4 x 22.9 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,823,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 2,501 in Population & Demography
- 12,223 in Anthropology & Sociology Biographies
- 17,080 in Multicultural Studies

Customer reviews:
281 ratings

Product description

About the Author

Edwin Black is the award-winning author of IBM and the Holocaust, which was published in the UK by Little Brown and has sold over 25,000 copies in hardback alone. It won the American Society of Journalists' and Authors' Award for best non-fiction book of 2002. As an investigative journalist, he has written for numerous papers and magazines including The Sunday Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Jerusalem Post.

Customer reviews

5 star		85%
4 star		11%
3 star		3%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		1%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Aurore Lebas

Amazing Piece of Research

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 August 2013

Verified Purchase

The headline says it all. This is a chilling account of America's contributions to the Nazi Holocaust; and now—beware "Newgenics".

Helpful

appledumpling

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 June 2012

Verified Purchase

This book was mentioned in the bibliography of a novel I was reading and the author had also written a short piece about eugenics. It wasn't really something I knew anything about so I bought this book to learn more. I'm about halfway through and I can't put it down. The book is well written and it isn't sensationalist. Eugenics is a difficult and emotive topic but presenting the facts as they are somehow makes them all the more shocking. Parts of it make uncomfortable reading but I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone wanting to more about eugenics.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

C. Ball

An important book, shedding light on a long-neglected era in American history...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 December 2013

So much attention has been paid to the means and methods of the Nazi's appalling atrocities during World War II, to the institutional, bureaucratic and legislative infrastructure created to support those actions and the race hatred that impelled them - but little attention has been paid up to the supposed scientific foundations that underlay all of the Nazis' beliefs and justifications. Everyone knows of the Nazis' belief in racial superiority, in the desire for a 'master race', an Aryan race of Nordic supermen - but those beliefs were founded on a pseudo-science called eugenics.

Surprisingly that pseudo-science found its greatest 'success', at least until the advent of Hitler and the totalitarian state of Nazi Germany, in America. Indeed, in this book Black convincingly argues that the 'science' of eugenics was founded in America and later transplanted to Germany. Whilst the term and the concept largely originated in England, there it was never more than theory, whereas it took root and actual expression in many states in America. Through organisations and experimental laboratories founded in large part by notable philanthropic bodies such as the Carnegie Institute and Rockefeller Foundation, American eugenicists, including Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood, lobbied Congress, state governments, public health bodies, institutions and care homes, to institute a national program aimed, effectively, weeding out the 'inferior stock' and increasing the ranks of the superior, namely the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic 'races'.

Whilst America never went as far as involuntary euthanasia, many states (over half) did implement laws legislating for involuntary sterilization, marriage restrictions, segregation, immigration restrictions - all designed to prevent those deemed inferior - whether because of intelligence levels, race, religion, hereditary illness or even alcoholism - from breeding and therefore perpetuating and spreading their 'defects' through the body public. California in particular led the way in this movement, with over one third of all compulsory sterilizations in the United States taking place in that state, some 20,000.

One of the truly horrifying revelations in this book was the extent of the legislation and how long the influence of eugenics lingered, and continues to do so. Even though the concept of 'eugenics' fell from favour after World War II and the revelations of the Holocaust, many advocates simply slipped quite effortlessly into the new field of 'genetics', a field Black argues is simply eugenics under another name and shorn of its social and racial elements. Many states took decades after WW2 to repeal their eugenics and miscegenation legislation, and some states continued to perform compulsory sterilization. Indeed, there is evidence that compulsory sterilization is still taking place within California's penal system.

This wasn't an easy read, both in style and in content. The author notes in his preface that each chapter could have been a book on its own, and I can see why. Many chapters feel like stand-alone papers, and Black does occasionally repeat himself or go over the same ground from a slightly different angle. By the time I'd read certain quotes three or four times in different contexts I was getting a little tired. But it is an immensely important book, shedding real light on a topic that has shamefully managed to evade the glaring light of public and academic scrutiny for too long and serving as a real warning to scientists who focus so minutely on aspects of human biology that they become lost in the biology and forget the humanity.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Old Bloke

A masterpiece of documentation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 May 2009

A dark, dark page of American history has been laid open here for future generations. This book has quite clearly been a genuine labour of love, thoroughly researched with all evidence gained painstakingly documented, ensuring that this widely unknown topic will never be forgotten. Please read.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Peyman Askari

Amazingly detailed, but not interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 August 2008

It's a very informative book, and would seriously recommend it if you are interested in eugenics.

Nevertheless, it is a rather boring read. I'm on page 94 and I'm starting to lose my mind. Black pretty much summed up why the book sucks on page xxii. "Frankly, I had amassed enough information to write a freestanding book for each of the twenty-one chapters in this volume." And essentially, that's what he did. He made every chapter far too long.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	AbeBooks Books, art & collectables	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Download Audiobooks	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	DPReview Digital Photography	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations

Amazon Home Services Experienced pros Happiness Guarantee	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands

Amazon Warehouse Deep Discounts Open-Box Products	Amazon Business Service for business customers	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food	Amazon Second Chance Pass it on, trade it in, give it a second life

Select Your Cookie Preferences

Follow the author

Similar authors to follow

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race Hardcover – 23 July 2003

Special offers and product promotions

Highly rated by customers

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product details

Product description

About the Author

Customer reviews

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.