Galton was instrumental in the formulation of 'eugenics', which seeks to improve the human stock and prevent the degeneration of genetic potential. He introduced the very word "eugenics" and the phrase "nature versus nature." This book consists of a number of lectures delivered by the author during the early part of the twentieth century. Contents: The Possible Improvement of the Human Breed under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment; Eugenics, its Definition, Scope, and Aims; Restrictions in Marriage Studies in National Eugenics; Eugenics as a Factor in Religion; Probability, the Foundation of Eugenics; and Local Associations for Promoting Eugenics.

Explores the political forces underlying shifts in thinking about the respective influence of heredity and environment in shaping human behavior, and the feasibility and morality of eugenics.

The history of eugenics and racial nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe is a neglected topic of analysis in contemporary scholarship. Moreover, national historiographies in Central and Southeast Europe have either marginalized eugenics and racial nationalism or deemed them incompatible with their respective national traditions. Accordingly, this volume has a two-fold ambition: to excavate the hitherto unknown eugenic movements in Central and Southeast Europe and to explain their relationship with racism, nationalism and anti-Semitism. On the one hand, the historiographic perspective substantiated in this volume connects developments in the history of racial anthropology, genetics and eugenics with political ideologies such as racial nationalism and anti-Semitism; on the other hand, it contests the 'Sonderweg' approach adopted by scholars dealing these phenomena in Central and Southeast Europe by arguing that concerns with eugenics and race were as widely disseminated in these regions as they were in Western Europe and North America. Book jacket.

This volume assesses the history of eugenics in the United States and its status in the age of the Human Genome Project. The essays explore the early support of compulsory sterilization by doctors and legislators.