| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.1

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.1 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s. By Christina Cogdell (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. ix plus 328 pp.).

In this provocative study, art historian Christina Cogdell links eugenic ideology with streamline industrial design in twentieth-century America. As she explains, "streamline designers approached products the same way that eugenicists approached bodies" (4). An interest in efficiency, hygiene, and progress shaped the views of both designers and eugenicists. Though there was little overlap in membership (few architects identified themselves as eugenicists), similar ideas about progress, evolution, and control allow for interesting comparisons. For example, both eugenicists and industrial designers frequently used the word "stream" as a metaphor for evolution, suggesting the importance of purity and progress. Twentieth-century bodies, like products, could be managed and manipulated to create a more perfect race.

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