The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea
CARLSON, Elof Axel
From Argosy Book Store, ABAA, ILAB, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Heritage Bookseller
AbeBooks Member Since 1996
From Argosy Book Store, ABAA, ILAB, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Heritage Bookseller
AbeBooks Member Since 1996
About this Item
Black & white illustrations. xiv, 451 pages. 8vo, blue leatherette with gilt lettering at spine, d.w. Cold Spring: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, (2001). A fine copy in a fine dust wrapper. Seller Inventory # 321041
Bibliographic Details
Title: The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: hardcover
Condition: fine
Dust Jacket Condition: fine
About this title
Certain individuals were judged "degenerate" as early as biblical times, and the condition was viewed as a punishment for religious transgression. Noted author Elof Axel Carlson traces the idea that degeneracy was biologically determined and shows how the social application of the label changed throughout the last century as the new academic discipline of sociology emerged. Carlson describes the failures and abuses of the social movements in the United States and Europe with their sorry history of racism, anti-Semitism, and violations of basic human rights.
Carlson writes beautifully, but I want to warn readers that this is not a book to be looked at lightly. It probably couldn't have the power it does if it did not include the wealth of illustrations and extensive notes, but it is indeed a serious study of this disturbing science. As Carlson writes in his Introduction, "Readers of this book may feel uncomfortable, as I certainly did, when they realize that there is a lot of mythology associated with the origins of the eugenics movement. It is embarrassing to see many strange bedfellows in the development of the idea of unfit people, and it should give us pause if we believe that the Holocaust could have been predicted from its earliest roots." I shivered when I read that statement. --Charles Decker
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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