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Shortest History
The Shortest History of Eugenics: From “Science” to Atrocity―How a Dangerous Movement Shaped the World, and Why It Persists
A harrowing history of a grim chapter in politics and science, in which groups of influential thinkers shaped global policy with the aim of determining who had the right to have children—and who was worthy of life.
For the last two centuries, groups of influential men have, in the professed interest of fiscal responsibility, crime reduction, and outright racism, attempted to control who was allowed to bear children. Their efforts, “eugenics,” characterize a movement that over the last century swept across the world—from the US to Brazil, Japan, India, Australia, and beyond—in the form of marriage restrictions, asylum detention, and sterilization campaigns affected millions. German physicians and scientists adopted and then heightened these eugenics practices beginning in 1939, starving or executing those they deemed “life unworthy of life.”
But well after the liberation of Nazi deathcamps, health care workers and even the US government pursued policies worldwide with the express purpose of limiting the reproduction of poor non-whites. The Shortest History of Eugenics takes us back to the founding principles of the movement, revealing how an idea that began in cattle breeding took such an insidious turn—and how it lingers in rhetoric and policy today.
The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.
For the last two centuries, groups of influential men have, in the professed interest of fiscal responsibility, crime reduction, and outright racism, attempted to control who was allowed to bear children. Their efforts, “eugenics,” characterize a movement that over the last century swept across the world—from the US to Brazil, Japan, India, Australia, and beyond—in the form of marriage restrictions, asylum detention, and sterilization campaigns affected millions. German physicians and scientists adopted and then heightened these eugenics practices beginning in 1939, starving or executing those they deemed “life unworthy of life.”
But well after the liberation of Nazi deathcamps, health care workers and even the US government pursued policies worldwide with the express purpose of limiting the reproduction of poor non-whites. The Shortest History of Eugenics takes us back to the founding principles of the movement, revealing how an idea that began in cattle breeding took such an insidious turn—and how it lingers in rhetoric and policy today.
The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionScience
304 pages, Paperback
Published December 10, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 25, 2025
Of all of these "The Shortest History of..." books that I've read so far, this is easily the most informative for me. Whether that's because it's focused on a narrower window than, say, the entire history of a single country, or because this was a topic I didn't know much about going into it, I can't say. But damned if it didn't hold my attention throughout.
The bulk of this book really focuses on a (relatively) tight 126-year period spanning from the beginnings of social Darwinism through ICE detention facilities in 2025, and opened my eyes to the uniquely Anglo-American origins of the titular topic. Like most people I hear "eugenics" and immediately think of Nazi Germany, but a lot of that was practiced or at least theorized about on a smaller scale on this side of the pond decades earlier. I'm talking forced sterilizations without people's knowledge or consent, attempting to use genetics to prove some people are naturally predisposed to become criminals, marriage restrictions, etc.
What gets me is that a lot of these early movements seemingly had public opinion behind them because they presented themselves as empirical, purely scientific endeavors. It's not exactly comparable to today (I feel the average person has less trust in science now compared to the turn of the 20th century), but it does make me wonder if there are things I blindly put faith in because of science that will be demonstrably disproven 100 years from now. I sure hope not, but who knows?
Lots of food for thought in this one, I'm pleased I read it.
The bulk of this book really focuses on a (relatively) tight 126-year period spanning from the beginnings of social Darwinism through ICE detention facilities in 2025, and opened my eyes to the uniquely Anglo-American origins of the titular topic. Like most people I hear "eugenics" and immediately think of Nazi Germany, but a lot of that was practiced or at least theorized about on a smaller scale on this side of the pond decades earlier. I'm talking forced sterilizations without people's knowledge or consent, attempting to use genetics to prove some people are naturally predisposed to become criminals, marriage restrictions, etc.
What gets me is that a lot of these early movements seemingly had public opinion behind them because they presented themselves as empirical, purely scientific endeavors. It's not exactly comparable to today (I feel the average person has less trust in science now compared to the turn of the 20th century), but it does make me wonder if there are things I blindly put faith in because of science that will be demonstrably disproven 100 years from now. I sure hope not, but who knows?
Lots of food for thought in this one, I'm pleased I read it.
August 15, 2024
The shortest review of The Shortest History of Eugenics is: exactly what it says on the tin.
The book is a history of eugenics, starting with references from ancient history and ending…well, it does not end. The book makes it a point to detail the ways in which eugenics or eugenics-inspired theories exist in contemporary political and social discussion.
It is a brief introduction (I keep wondering if "shortest" is a pun) out of necessity of covering 2,500 years of history. It is also brief because eugenics itself is a protean figure. Think, for instance, if you were writing the history of light. The book could discuss physics, the eye, astronomy, art theory, yet eugenics is still worse for having not only science but pseudoscience.
The author makes a pair of good choices in terms of presenting a satisfying arc. The first is in focusing on biographies of the proponents throughout the years. This helps the reader have something concrete to hold to as the modalities change, and it provides humanization without rationalization.
The second is in stressing the trend of the history from "positive" to "negative." Not in a moral sense - it is all evil - but in a methodological sense of eugenicists trying to breed "the good" shifting to sterilization or genocide of "the bad."
Its brevity is weakness and strength. It is necessarily short to be an overview, but at points that becomes elision, for instance in dealing with genetics pre-re-discovery of Mendel (the subject of a great public science series). I am less worried about this in the abstract of the book as foundational education as I am in thinking about where our current supporters of Eugenics or I Can't Believe It's Not Eugenics! supporters would criticize the text on. The same goes for some of the melodrama in the writing. It is justified on the basis of the material (contra the chapter titles, where an editor ought to have stepped in [or if an editor did step in, find a new career]), but I feel that the persuasive value is less than the risk of tone policing.
So, while this should be looked at as more of a springboard to further reading, it does not profess to be anything else, and does that job well. The book is a reminder of how far we have not come, how bad so many otherwise decent people were, and as an adjunct to many other intellectual histories that glues ideas together.
My thanks to the author, Erik Peterson, for writing the book, and to the publisher, The Experiment, for making the ARC available to me.
The book is a history of eugenics, starting with references from ancient history and ending…well, it does not end. The book makes it a point to detail the ways in which eugenics or eugenics-inspired theories exist in contemporary political and social discussion.
It is a brief introduction (I keep wondering if "shortest" is a pun) out of necessity of covering 2,500 years of history. It is also brief because eugenics itself is a protean figure. Think, for instance, if you were writing the history of light. The book could discuss physics, the eye, astronomy, art theory, yet eugenics is still worse for having not only science but pseudoscience.
The author makes a pair of good choices in terms of presenting a satisfying arc. The first is in focusing on biographies of the proponents throughout the years. This helps the reader have something concrete to hold to as the modalities change, and it provides humanization without rationalization.
The second is in stressing the trend of the history from "positive" to "negative." Not in a moral sense - it is all evil - but in a methodological sense of eugenicists trying to breed "the good" shifting to sterilization or genocide of "the bad."
Its brevity is weakness and strength. It is necessarily short to be an overview, but at points that becomes elision, for instance in dealing with genetics pre-re-discovery of Mendel (the subject of a great public science series). I am less worried about this in the abstract of the book as foundational education as I am in thinking about where our current supporters of Eugenics or I Can't Believe It's Not Eugenics! supporters would criticize the text on. The same goes for some of the melodrama in the writing. It is justified on the basis of the material (contra the chapter titles, where an editor ought to have stepped in [or if an editor did step in, find a new career]), but I feel that the persuasive value is less than the risk of tone policing.
So, while this should be looked at as more of a springboard to further reading, it does not profess to be anything else, and does that job well. The book is a reminder of how far we have not come, how bad so many otherwise decent people were, and as an adjunct to many other intellectual histories that glues ideas together.
My thanks to the author, Erik Peterson, for writing the book, and to the publisher, The Experiment, for making the ARC available to me.
June 25, 2025
Starts out fine as a brief history of the movement. However, the last half makes pretty thin arguments trying to connect the environmental movement and USAID policies of the 70's to eugenics. The book is written in a very casual tone that I found off-putting.
July 19, 2025
Pfff!! Uno se hace una pregunta constantemente: ¿Cómo es que nos convencimos de la mentira de que Estados Unidos es la mejor democracia y el mejor país del mundo? El país que apenas hace 50 años tenía un programa para esterilizar sin consentimiento a personas que creían "menos que otras" o, incluso, que hace apenas 30 seguían practicando esterilizaciones sin consentimiento a mujeres latinas, migrantes y personas con discapacidades...
Pero, peor aún, uno va escuchando esta historia de la eugenesia y no puede evitar sentir el tufo del pasado y la inspiración de Francis Galton, Charlotte Fowler, Gregor Mendel o Hilda Noyes en las políticas públicas de Stephen Miller y Donald Trump. "El mundo se está pudriendo", dirían algunos. ¿Nos hemos puesto a pensar que llevamos así muchísimo tiempo y no queremos darnos cuenta?
Lectura básica para entender las perversiones que se ocultan detrás de algunas "buenas intenciones", como los programas de control de población de John D. Rockefeller.
Les dejo dos párrafos para que vean que las élites de verdad son más perversas de lo que queremos admitir:
“Rockefeller quickly assembled a group of social scientists, government officials, and business tycoons. He called the group the Population Council. Their mission would be to convince the wealthy and powerful around the world that “the relationship of population to material and cultural resources of the world represents one of the most crucial and urgent problems of the day.”
"“In 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that doctors had surgically sterilized almost 150 incarcerated women at two California facilities between 2006 and 2010 either without their knowledge or under coercion. Anecdotal evidence from former inmates and guards suggested that, in truth, far more had been involuntarily sterilized. Many reported being pressured to consent by James Heinrich, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla. Heinrich made his views clear, unintentionally parroting an old eugenics line: “Over a ten-year period, [the cost of the surgeries] isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children—as they procreated more.”
Y aún así creemos que es "The Land of the Free".
Pero, peor aún, uno va escuchando esta historia de la eugenesia y no puede evitar sentir el tufo del pasado y la inspiración de Francis Galton, Charlotte Fowler, Gregor Mendel o Hilda Noyes en las políticas públicas de Stephen Miller y Donald Trump. "El mundo se está pudriendo", dirían algunos. ¿Nos hemos puesto a pensar que llevamos así muchísimo tiempo y no queremos darnos cuenta?
Lectura básica para entender las perversiones que se ocultan detrás de algunas "buenas intenciones", como los programas de control de población de John D. Rockefeller.
Les dejo dos párrafos para que vean que las élites de verdad son más perversas de lo que queremos admitir:
“Rockefeller quickly assembled a group of social scientists, government officials, and business tycoons. He called the group the Population Council. Their mission would be to convince the wealthy and powerful around the world that “the relationship of population to material and cultural resources of the world represents one of the most crucial and urgent problems of the day.”
"“In 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that doctors had surgically sterilized almost 150 incarcerated women at two California facilities between 2006 and 2010 either without their knowledge or under coercion. Anecdotal evidence from former inmates and guards suggested that, in truth, far more had been involuntarily sterilized. Many reported being pressured to consent by James Heinrich, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla. Heinrich made his views clear, unintentionally parroting an old eugenics line: “Over a ten-year period, [the cost of the surgeries] isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children—as they procreated more.”
Y aún así creemos que es "The Land of the Free".
September 12, 2024
4.5
This book does exactly what it says: it gives you a good understanding of the way this dangerous movement came to be so powerful and how it's impacted politics and society-wide healthcare while pointing out how much of these ideas still exist today and how some of those truly atrocious acts are still committed (legally!!!) in many countries as I write this review.
The content isn't too dense even though it's part history, part science (pseudoscience for the most part), and this book covers many countries which I found was really interesting as the other book on the topic I've read only included cases and politics in the UK and the US.
Such a relevant read in these times of political... chaos and with the rise of the very controlling and dangerous extreme-right. That said, don't fool yourself into thinking only Trump supporters support eugenics.
I wish the very last part included a bit more of a look at how eugenics are a part of the popular culture / how people talk about eugenic ideas so casually without fully recognizing it's eugenics. I think it would have been a perfect opportunity to get the reader to question their own feelings and beliefs by stating more common ideas that float around society, but that's just personal preference. This book was good regardless of this little thing.
Thank you NetGalley and The Experiment for the opportunity to read this ARC.
This book does exactly what it says: it gives you a good understanding of the way this dangerous movement came to be so powerful and how it's impacted politics and society-wide healthcare while pointing out how much of these ideas still exist today and how some of those truly atrocious acts are still committed (legally!!!) in many countries as I write this review.
The content isn't too dense even though it's part history, part science (pseudoscience for the most part), and this book covers many countries which I found was really interesting as the other book on the topic I've read only included cases and politics in the UK and the US.
Such a relevant read in these times of political... chaos and with the rise of the very controlling and dangerous extreme-right. That said, don't fool yourself into thinking only Trump supporters support eugenics.
I wish the very last part included a bit more of a look at how eugenics are a part of the popular culture / how people talk about eugenic ideas so casually without fully recognizing it's eugenics. I think it would have been a perfect opportunity to get the reader to question their own feelings and beliefs by stating more common ideas that float around society, but that's just personal preference. This book was good regardless of this little thing.
Thank you NetGalley and The Experiment for the opportunity to read this ARC.
November 11, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free, advanced copy of this thought-provoking book.
Eugenics, the idea of “improving” human genetics, might initially sound innocuous. However, its application has led to some of the most horrendous crimes and genocides in human history. Hitler’s “Final Solution” is perhaps the most infamous example of eugenics taken to a horrifying extreme. Yet long before and even after WWII, millions of people fell victim to this so-called “science.”
The Shortest History of Eugenics traces eugenics’ disturbing origins and evolution, from its inception to its devastating role in World War II and beyond. Erik L. Peterson examines how this pseudoscience gained popularity and was endorsed by many influential figures despite its flawed and unethical foundations. The book is packed with disturbing yet fascinating facts, shedding light on why eugenics attracted widespread support across various sectors of society.
The subject of eugenics is indeed a dark one, and its history is filled with tragedy. As such, it remained in the shadows for many years after WWII. This book, however, is a superb resource on the topic, offering a well-researched and engaging account that brings the history of eugenics to life. Readers interested in history or science will find this book invaluable.
I plan to purchase a physical copy as soon as it’s available, as it’s the kind of book you’ll want to return to for its rich historical insights and well-documented accounts.
Eugenics, the idea of “improving” human genetics, might initially sound innocuous. However, its application has led to some of the most horrendous crimes and genocides in human history. Hitler’s “Final Solution” is perhaps the most infamous example of eugenics taken to a horrifying extreme. Yet long before and even after WWII, millions of people fell victim to this so-called “science.”
The Shortest History of Eugenics traces eugenics’ disturbing origins and evolution, from its inception to its devastating role in World War II and beyond. Erik L. Peterson examines how this pseudoscience gained popularity and was endorsed by many influential figures despite its flawed and unethical foundations. The book is packed with disturbing yet fascinating facts, shedding light on why eugenics attracted widespread support across various sectors of society.
The subject of eugenics is indeed a dark one, and its history is filled with tragedy. As such, it remained in the shadows for many years after WWII. This book, however, is a superb resource on the topic, offering a well-researched and engaging account that brings the history of eugenics to life. Readers interested in history or science will find this book invaluable.
I plan to purchase a physical copy as soon as it’s available, as it’s the kind of book you’ll want to return to for its rich historical insights and well-documented accounts.
December 9, 2024
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This is the longest “short” guide I’ve read so far but that’s not a bad thing as it means the book is a complete and detailed guide despite being on a difficult theory and its often horrific historical applications. I liked that the parts were split with the years included so we could see how the theory has developed over time and the last part was great to highlight that eugenics is not history despite the beliefs of some people. Overall, this is a great educational guide to the theory of eugenics.
March 30, 2025
Very informative
May 28, 2025
I had no idea this was so prevalent, widespread, and still relevant today. Great, informative summary
September 25, 2025
I’ve read many books on Eugenics, but this one is brimming with information formerly unknown to me. All of it disturbing.
October 9, 2025
Detailed and thorough in the history of a horrific topic that still pervades and persists even in 2025.
Read
December 12, 2025The path to hell is paved with good intentions
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews