550 pages

WAR AGAINST THE WEAK: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race.

Edwin Black. Four Walls Eight Windows. $27.

What it's about: Black's premise is that ''the scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island at the Carnegie Institution's eugenic enterprise at Cold Spring Harbor.'' The first work on eugenics in the United States began in 1904.

What exactly does ''eugenics'' mean, anyway?: ''The movement devoted to improving the human species through the control of hereditary factors in mating,'' according to Webster's Dictionary.

Frightening fact part I: More than 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized under this program. They were chosen because of ''their ancestry, national origin, race or religion'' in a quest to ``create a superior Nordic race.''

Frightening fact part II: The original goal was to ``immediately sterilize fourteen million people in the United States and millions more worldwide.''

What's in a name: Once the truth about Nazi concentration camps and experiments came to light, the U.S. eugenics movement ended, with institutions quickly substituting in their titles the word ''genetics'' for ``eugenics.''

-- CONNIE OGLE

cogle@herald.com