History has recorded the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, but until now America's own efforts to create a master race have been largely overlooked. In War Against the Weak, investigative journalist Edwin Black reveals that, in the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with "progressive" thinkers to create the racist pseudoscience of eugenics. Even more shocking, Black traces the flow of ideas, research and money from Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island) to Germany -- in the process proving that it was the American social elite's eugenics program that gave Hitler the scientific justification to escalate his virulent racial views into all-out genocide.

Black's team of dozens of researchers scoured scores of archives in four countries, unearthing some 50,000 documents which collectively prove that the eugenics movement was funded by esteemed philanthropies such as the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations; was taught at Yale, Harvard and Princeton; was lauded by leading "progressive" thinkers such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger; and was even sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Black then traces how, with this kind of backing, American eugenics was quickly able to move beyond the theoretical in its quest to eliminate social and genetic "undesirables," getting cruel and racist laws enacted in 27 US states. He shows how those at the forefront of the movement worked tirelessly toward the goal of continuously eradicating the "lower tenth" until a pure Nordic super-race remained. Ultimately, Black reveals, 60,000 Americans were sterilized against their will -- and tens of thousands of others were institutionalized or denied the right to marry whom they chose.

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com