Chilling in its exposure of the shameless racism, class prejudice and cruelties of eugenic attitudes and practices in the United States... [Black's book] prompt[s] us to wonder what in medical genetics and biotechnology we are taking socially and morally for granted today that our descendants might indict us for tomorrow.

In War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, investigative journalist Edwin Black compellingly argues that the ethnic-cleansing movement that culminated in Nazi Germany's death camps during World War II was the realization of a particularly ugly American dream. Black, whose mother lived under Nazi rule in Poland, writes here with the zeal of an avenger, albeit one with the assistance of a team of 50 researchers who unearthed some 50,000 documents to support his case.

Edwin Black, author of the radical and revelatory IBM and the Holocaust, is a dangerous man. He tells us things we don't want to hear, like, for instance, this: "The scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island." His groundbreaking War Against the Weak, Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race... is a scary and necessary book.

Ambitious... richly detailed... [Black has] written a serious, thoroughly documented study. The scope of the book is impressive -- it spans 150 years and reaches into the archives of four countries -- and it contains some remarkable new data and sharp insights. ...Black has the right credentials to tear away the thickets of mystery surrounding the eugenics movement...the author brings a critical sensability to his work.

In a new book, War Against the Weak, investigative reporter Edwin Black makes the case that 20th Century American proponents of eugenics... had substantive ties to the architects of Hitler's racial extermination machine...Black lays bare the veins of collaboration between American eugenicists and Nazi scientists.

Black, aided by a small army of researchers and scholars, uncovers the roots of the Nazis' obsession with racial purity and their devotion to the Nordic ideal of blond hair and blue eyes, a notion popularized in the United States, not Germany. ...As we consider the commercial possibilities afforded by gene mapping, cloning and the like, this book should be required reading for leaders seeking to avoid the inevitable penalties bestowed upon those who fail to learn the lessons of history.

Fierce, compelling... well told and extraordinarily sad... a prodigious feat of reporting.

An important work... A well-documented, comprehensive exposition of a story not known to most Americans, about a perversion of the pursuit of knowledge in the interest of race and social superiority.

Edwin Black has written what may well be the best book ever published about the American eugenics movement and the horrific events it spawned. Combining exhaustive research, a very readable style, and just the right touch of outrage, Black splendidly conveys the evil depth and breadth of eugenics philosophy, the pseudo-science and social theory that unleashed a half-century of war against society's most vulnerable citizens.

In this bombshell of investigative journalism, Black (of IBM and the Holocaust) reveals that eugenics was extensive, systematic, well-funded, and supported by major political and intellectual leaders; perhaps most startling, it directly inspired the rise of Nazism in Hitler's Germany... This chilling and well-researched book is highly recommended.

A hair-raiser and an eye-opener... contains details so vivid and horrid that one can hardly believe them or bear to read them.... This is an important book, filled with little-known facts about how some of our most esteemed institutions and professionals have funded and practiced very bad science, if it was science at all, and how this pseudoscience permeated much of the world's thinking and led to the atrocities of a world war.

Edwin Black's War Against the Weak is the best book on eugenics ever written.

Did Auschwitz have its origins in America? Edwin Black argues that the "science" of eugenics was promoted by some of America's most important individuals and institutions, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Oliver Wendell Holmes and even Woodrow Wilson. The author's descriptions of how 60,000 Americans were sterilized against their will in the name of racial purity will leave you speechless.

Chilling and thoroughly researched... it is a book whose message must be made known... for those who say "It can't happen here."

Fascinating... War Against the Weak is filled with tale after tale of arrogance, ignorance and cruelty—accounts that Black wisely allows the eugenicists to relate in their own words.

Impressive, probably the popular history of eugenics for the foreseeable future.

An impressive job... the resulting story is at once shocking and gripping... an important book that will add to the public's understanding of this critical chapter of American history.

This is an important book... [it] demonstrates the continuity of attitudes only too well, and also the absence of a moral philosophy which explores our right or duty to interfere with the natural processes of life.

In the stunning new book, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, investigative journalist Edwin Black... uncovers a long-repressed chapter of social history significant enough to command reappraisal of the legacy of eugenics for today and for the future. ... Edwin Black has distinguished himself as a journalist for more than two decades, both in the United States and abroad. A masterpiece of research and style, War Against the Weak is arguably his most important work to date and certainly one of the noteworthy books of the year.

You'll be floored by evidence of experiments in forced sterilization, human breeding programs, marriage prohibition, and passive euthanasia — all seeking to eliminate non-white races, epileptics, alcoholics, petty criminals, the mentally ill and others — a program sanctioned by our own Supreme Court. Black's treatment of this historical elitism brings new implications to the Human Genome Project and twenty-first century genetic engineering.