1: Better for all the world, as the author says early on in the book, is written as simply this; A story

of what happened. The Author is masterful in that he does not write it like an analysis or historical paper; he writes it like a story, an extremely interesting and deeply human story. I think that, in a way that is more effective than anything else he could have written. Here, you see the story as it was, which is important when talking about something so significant and yet so forgotten. By making this a story, a personal one, we are shown how far from being new the genetic ideals of purifying the human race really are. The book serves as a reminder of what can happen when we humans are willing to sacrifice so much to do something that is better for all the world.

2: the founder of the Eugenics movement was one Francis Galton. An interesting example of the British Victorian gentlemen, Galton's childhood was fairly prodigious, he was a smart child, achieving academic success from a young age, which fostered a great deal of high expectations for him by his family expectations that was not able to completely meet, a fact that haunted him all of his life. He Grew up to be a Victorian Gentlemen of the most adventurous sort, going to places like Africa and Greece having wild adventures and drooling over the local women. Anyway, from a young age, he had a radical intuition; an intuition that reasoned that if a better race of plants and animals could and should be created through selective breeding, why would the same not be true for humans? With a combination of his own studies, and scientific discovered in his time, most importantly the origin of species, by his cousin Darwin, he was able to construct a new theory called Eugenics, a new, idealism concept that promised to create a super race of geniuses. These discoveries dismissed the once holy assumption that man's physical and mental nature was as malleable throughout science as any other facet of nature, and, that the new study of genetics was just as relevant in study of humans as it was in study of any other species. Galton, like many in his time, had broad, sweeping ideals about the long term benefit of ones race, in his case, the British people.

3: Harry Laughlin and Charles Davenport, two of the greatest and most leading figures in the eugenics movement, had allot in common in their influential lives and careers. Both were deeply influenced by their upbringing, carrying the lessons they learned as children strongly throughout their lives. Davenport Was raised by traditional puritan father, a pious, hardworking man, obsessed with his family pedigree, and an ardent proponent of the old American Ideals of destiny, of being Gods chosen people. He was an authoritarian, somewhat cold and oppressive figure in his sons life, a father who expected practical careers from his sons, and pious lives to match. In the end, The Young Davenport would not yield to his fathers overbearing manipulation forever, and was far from close to the old man when he finally passed away. Despite this, he carried the importance of pedigree, and the destiny of the American people, even being rather strict morally. Harry Laughlins most influential parent was his mother, who was a strong, unique woman of a rare breed, especially in her time. She was educated, and raised her

children to be the great men of tomorrow, while somehow finding time to be active in the making of history herself. Harry spent the rest of his life with a great love for her, and, when she died, her memory. He never lost the impetus to make her proud. In their eugenics work, they shared many ideals, and both were able to achieve great academic success (Davenport first and foremost, but Laughlin succeeding him) and were able to see their research garner some respect from the greatest men of their day, people like Alexander Graham Bell and Theodore Roosevelt. The End of these two men also had something in common; the most ironic form of tragedy possible. Davenport, who had always spoken of the imperative for the fit morally and physically to continue their line of greatness, died without any descendants, his daughter was childless, and a divorcee from a marriage with a Jew. Laughlins fate was ever more cruel; he never had any children, and was afflicted, and eventually killed, by the very same seizures his lifes work had been to sterilize out of existence.

4: Americans were very receptive to eugenics movement, to an extent that would surprise their modern descendants. This was because the eugenics movement claimed motives and end goals that were long accepted parts of being American. We had always though ourselves a city on a hill a new and chosen people capable of greatness surpassing the old world. It was an ideal that suggested a choice, a choice between the mire of decay and corruption or the glory of purity and strength. Obviously we knew which one we wanted, so the question was, how to carry the ideal into practice? Eugenics, of course. Eugenics claim to marrying the noble institutions of charity with longer term, more effective methods offered by the burgeoning science, the American people could protect themselves from their dreaded fall while ensuring their destined rise. It seemed that the movement had the great men of the age behind it; Men like Theodore Roosevelt, whose face would later be carved on mount Rushmore and Alexander Graham Bell, father of the telephone showed support for the idea, in varying amounts of dedication and longevity. At first, the movement was rather successful, but it never truly got to the scale that its leaders had at first envisioned, which is one of the reasons that Nazi Germany, not America, ended up shocking the world

5: The Eugenics movement did fairly well in the courts for quite a long time. In many states, California included, legislation was passed for forced for eugenics, and even in ones where no actual law were passed concerning it, the judicial process was deeply affected by its influence. In one case, for example, a man who had been convicted of theft twice was declared unfit to go through with marriage by his judge, and thus was legally unable to do so. Indeed, in Buck VS Bell, the Supreme Court rule eugenics constitutional, and even after WW2 when the idea was no longer so popular, states were mostly left to their own devices in deciding upon the issue. Besides that, race based Immigration, a big issue for a place like the USA, was considered an

important part of eugenics, and, like sterilization, achieved some victories, but as eugenics went out of vogue, it was changed.

6: Despite all of its lofty promises and claimed scientific solidity, the eugenics movement had its share of opponents. Among these, most prominent was the Catholic Church, on both a personal and organizationally-wide level. The very idea of eugenics interfered with ancient and essential doctrines held by the church, scientific or not. Firstly, the eugenic concept of heredity, in effect, reduced humans and their morality to a set of predetermined patterns governed by genetics. No longer did God bless or curse; no longer was the human soul above human knowledge, as for countless ages people had thought. Now, it was up to society who would be blessed or cursed, and the mystery of the human soul was not above scientific understanding and therefore manipulation. Thus, even before the pope ruled on the churchs official standing on the issue, it was clear where it stood. Backing the catholic church there were respected writers and intellectuals like HG wells, and of course Booker T Washington, who claimed that people (blacks in particular) were worth saving, and could be taught to be just as productive as the Nordic Americans.

7: Eugenics has two main facets, the positive and the negative application of itself. Simply put, positive eugenics helps improve humanity by making sure the good multiplies, while negative eugenics seeks to do so by eliminating the bad. Positive eugenics was mostly a culturally implemented policy, stemming from already firmly held beliefs. Granted, there was some small legal action to it, but mostly it was the pride of the fit that kept them from the unfit. Negative Eugenics, however, was always considered to be the real solution, the only final answer to the threat of bad genes. Thousands were rounded up and sterilized in the name of eugenics, both legally and illegally. One of the great flaws of the movement was how unprofessional, how woefully unscientific its implementation was. Thousands of field agents with little supervision and armed with data that was often wildly subjective, went out into the nation and studied untold numbers of families and individuals, and proceeded to dub them fit or not. Besides segregation and sterilization, the movement saw that it would obviously be in its best interest, if it were to have any chance of eliminating the bad in the American genepool, to stop the flow of it from foreign countries. Thus, immigration based on the perceived genetic quality of lack of it of a given ethnic group was fought for, and won some good success.

8: America has always been influenced by Europe, and vice-verca; in the case of Eugenics, its the kind of influence that we would rather forget, and pretty much have. In the years before World War 2, as the Nazi Warmachine was building up, Hitler and his regime wanted the quest for the dominance of the Nordic/German/Aryan Race to start where it should, that is, at home, in

Germany itself. Hitler wanted race based immigration laws, and the sterilization and/or expulsion of the unfit from his new Germany. Of course, as with most legal affairs, these policies needed precedent, a model to follow, even. He needed to look no further than the land of the free and the home of the brave, citing, sometimes even copying our laws. Today, Nazis are the universal bad guy; No stereotype is so widely agreed upon, no faction of the past reviled so completely. Thus, its not surprise we want to forget we ever had anything to do with them and their policies, other than, of course, slaughtering them mercilessly in our videogames.

9: At some point, obviously eugenics failed, it suffered two major blows to make that happen; the practical, legal blow, and the cultural blow. The Practicality and scientific validity of eugenics had been under attack for years even at its zenith, and as evidence piled up against it, it started to look like pseudoscience. Legally, after world war 2, America was extremely eager to distance itself from the evils of Nazism, and counted Eugenics itself, along with many of the ideals behind it to be inherently Nazi. After the Nuremburg trials, there were new laws, laws that the Americans were eager to follow, laws that they liked to think they always had followed, laws that were obviously against eugenics. Besides this, another, more subtle thing happened to it; it was forgotten. It ceased to be a part of the mainstream American thought process. This is really the worst blow of all. After all, although presenting eugenics

10: I asked both my parents about Eugenics; both of them agreed with it to a certain extent. Both of them were firm believers in the pedophiles being castrated, though, I think that has more to do that anything, and I mean anything done to any pedophile regardless of eugenic theory is justifiable. My aunt is more liberal bent, and actually kind of had a more broad opinion; she was ardently against it, saying that it was a Nazi kind of thing to do. The fourth person I interviewed was a friend of mine, the only one of the 4 that was not white; she surprised me by being very supportive of it, saying that people with significant mental defects, especially the mental retarded, should never reproduce, ever. Personally, I am ambivalent about it. On one hand I agree with all the ideals of the eugenics movement. A world without disease or mental defects? Hell yeah. But do I feel that I would, myself, or want anyone else to, do what is necessary for it? For good or ill, at any rate, Eugenics is present enough to get some interesting results from Google. There was the normal fare or Wikipedia and dictionary entries, along with a few allusions to the Nazis, but the most interesting I found was a site that mentioned DARPAs projects to make soldiers able to surpass normal human abilities easily, and even the potential of modifying the genetics of a person before they are borne. Maybe these supermen will be better for all the world.