| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s. Ed. by Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006. x, 406 pp. Cloth, $69.95, ISBN 978-0-8214-1691-4. Paper, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-8214-1692-1.)

Conventional narratives about eugenics in the United States argue that the movement was in decline in the 1930s, with biologists and anthropologists judging the movement as bad science. Popular Eugenics, edited by Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell, presents fourteen essays demonstrating that eugenic rhetoric still held a prominent place in public imagination despite its reputation among scientists. After the heights of the 1920s, most eugenicists softened their focus on biological determinism to accommodate the influence of environmental factors in reproduction, but authors, artists, and designers continued to employ forceful narratives of reproductive declension and self-improvement in their work. Divided into two sections, one on popular writing and one on visual culture, the collection provides a much-needed look at eugenics in popular culture that will balance the overemphasis on science in eugenic history.

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