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Product Identifiers

PublisherNorton & Company, Incorporated, w. w.

ISBN-101324035609

ISBN-139781324035602

eBay Product ID (ePID)17057257525

Product Key Features

Book TitleControl : the Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics

Number of Pages288 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2022

TopicEthics, Sociology / General, History

GenreSocial Science, Science, Medical

AuthorAdam Rutherford

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1 in

Item Weight13.8 Oz

Item Length8.6 in

Item Width5.9 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2022-027417

ReviewsA short, sharp, illuminating overview of the science, politics, uses and abuses of human gene editing, A remarkable combination of intelligence, knowledge, insight and admirable political passion, on a serious moral problem in contemporary society., Control is persuasive, sensible and ultimately reassuring, but it is not complacent.... To know history is 'to inoculate ourselves against its being repeated,' Rutherford argues. From that perspective, this book is a shot worth having., A remarkable combination of intelligence, knowledge, insight and admirable political passion, on a serious moral problem in contemporary society.--Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics A short, sharp, illuminating overview of the science, politics, uses and abuses of human gene editing--Tim Adams, Observer, Book of the Week Weighty and serious but accessible and perfectly pitched. The scholarship is astounding.--Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors A clear-sighted look at the past and present dangers of eugenics. Rutherford tells [the story] with great concision and with clarity, both scientific and moral. [He] condenses tricky concepts into smart and often witty prose, combining erudition with humility.... Honest, informed and humane.--Philip Ball, Financial Times Rutherford's swift, well-written account of these fascinating scientific and moral issues is well worth a read.--Emma Duncan, The Times, Book of the Week Control is persuasive, sensible and ultimately reassuring, but it is not complacent.... To know history is 'to inoculate ourselves against its being repeated,' Rutherford argues. From that perspective, this book is a shot worth having.--Katy Guest, Guardian, Book of the Day [Rutherford's] scientific demolition of the eugenic project is brilliantly illuminating and compelling. His book will be indispensable for anyone who wants to assess the wild claims and counter-claims surrounding new genetic technologies.--John Gray, New Statesman, [Rutherford's] scientific demolition of the eugenic project is brilliantly illuminating and compelling. His book will be indispensable for anyone who wants to assess the wild claims and counter-claims surrounding new genetic technologies., A clear-sighted look at the past and present dangers of eugenics. Rutherford tells [the story] with great concision and with clarity, both scientific and moral. [He] condenses tricky concepts into smart and often witty prose, combining erudition with humility.... Honest, informed and humane., Rutherford's swift, well-written account of these fascinating scientific and moral issues is well worth a read.

Dewey Edition23

Dewey Decimal363.9209

SynopsisHow did an obscure academic idea pave the way to the Holocaust within just fifty years? Control is a book about eugenics, what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls "a defining idea of the twentieth century." Inspired by Darwin's ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America, where it was embraced by presidents, funded by Gilded Age monopolists, and enshrined into racist American laws that became the ideological cornerstone of the Third Reich. Despite this horrific legacy, eugenics looms large today as the advances in genetics in the last thirty years--from the sequencing of the human genome to modern gene editing techniques--have brought the idea of population purification back into the mainstream. Eugenics has "a short history, but a long past," Rutherford writes. The first half of Control is the history of an idea, from its roots in key philosophical texts of the classical world all the way into their genocidal enactment in the twentieth century. The second part of the book explores how eugenics operates today, as part of our language and culture, as part of current political and racial discussions, and as an eternal temptation to powerful people who wish to improve society through reproductive control. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions-- did eugenics work in Nazi Germany? And could it work today?--revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.

LC Classification NumberHQ751.R87 2023