You and Heredity, by Amram Scheinfeld (HC, 1939, $3)
The author is a layman, who searched for answers for himself, and then decided to share them. Hitler is in power and claiming Germans as the master race. Genetics labs are spilling out new data every day. Eugenics radicals are screaming out for birth control and sterilization to decrease the number of "unfit". Environmentalists are crying out for education, hygiene and social reform to increase the number of "fit". How can a layman make sense of any of this? Is it, or is it not, safe to have children? Using the knowledge available in 1939, Scheinfeld works his way through the issues. I found him amazingly modern, except when he was not. Look for this book on the new non-fiction table, avail. 9/14.
P.S. Did you know?-
Sterilization became legal in the U.S. in California in 1907. By the time this book was published 27 other states had made sterilization legal, and 27,000 people, 60% of whom were women, had been sterilized, nearly half of them in California alone. What's the story there? ( So, it wasn't only the Germans who sterilized.)
