The following is a bibliography of the history of eugenics. Works on the philosophy, ethics, science, law, culture and contemporary debates of eugenics are listed in the Bibliography of eugenics.
Eugenics is a largely discredited set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fertility of those considered inferior, often through forced sterilization, or promoting that of those considered superior.
Bibliography contains academic level English language books (including translations) and journal articles, published mainly post World War II. Book entries may have references to reviews published in academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful. These reference reviews also function as a resource to find other works on this subject.
Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major trade press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see Further reading section for longer ones, and External links section for historical sites and museums.
Citations follow APA style. Books have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, give relevant chapter or section titles where useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.
General surveys
Allen, G. E. (2011). Eugenics and modern biology: Critiques of eugenics, 1910–1945. Annals of Human Genetics, 75(3), 314–325. Bashford, A. (2010). Internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eugenics. In A. Bashford & P. Levine (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics (pp. 154–172). Oxford University Press. Bashford, A., & Levine, P. (Eds.). (2010). The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics. Oxford University Press. Carlson, E. A. (2001). The unfit: A history of a bad idea. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Dikötter, F. (1998). Race culture: Recent perspectives on the history of eugenics. The American Historical Review, 103(2), 467–478. Gillette, A. (2007). Eugenics and the nature-nurture debate in the twentieth century. Palgrave Macmillan. Kevles, D. J. (1985). In the name of eugenics: Genetics and the uses of human heredity. Alfred A. Knopf. Kühl, S. (2013). For the betterment of the race. Palgrave Macmillan. Levine, P. (2017). Eugenics: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Paul, D. (1984). Eugenics and the left. Journal of the History of Ideas, 45(4), 567–590. Paul, D. B. (1995). Controlling human heredity: 1865 to the present. Humanities Press. Paul, D. B. (1998). The politics of heredity: Essays on eugenics, biomedicine, and the nature-nurture debate. State University of New York Press. Roll-Hansen, N. (1988). The progress of eugenics: Growth of knowledge and change in ideology. History of Science, 26(3), 295–331. Roll-Hansen, N. (2010). Eugenics and the science of genetics. In A. Bashford & P. Levine (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics (pp. 80–97). Oxford University Press. Rutherford, A. (2022). Control: The dark history and troubling present of eugenics. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Origins and precursors
Gökyiğit, E. A. (1994). The reception of Francis Galton's Hereditary genius in the Victorian periodical press. Journal of the History of Biology, 27(2), 215–240. Hawkins, M. (1997). Social Darwinism in European and American thought, 1860–1945: Nature as model and nature as threat. Cambridge University Press. Magnello, E. (2004). The reception of Mendelism by the biometricians and the early Mendelians (1899–1909). In M. Keynes, A. W. F. Edwards, & R. Peel (Eds.), A century of Mendelism in human genetics (pp. 19–32). CRC Press. Mazumdar, P. M. H. (2002). 'Reform' eugenics and the decline of Mendelism. Trends in Genetics, 18(1), 48–52. Paul, D. B. (2009). Darwin, social Darwinism and eugenics. In J. Hodge & G. Radick (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Darwin (2nd ed., pp. 219–245). Cambridge University Press. Pick, D. (1989). Faces of degeneration: A European disorder, c. 1848–c. 1918. Cambridge University Press. Porter, T. M. (2018). Genetics in the madhouse: The unknown history of human heredity. Princeton University Press. Richards, M. (2004). Perfecting people: Selective breeding at the Oneida Community (1869–1879) and the eugenics movement. New Genetics and Society, 23(1), 47–71. Waller, J. C. (2001). Ideas of heredity, reproduction and eugenics in Britain, 1800–1875. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 32(3), 457–489.
Antiquity Galton, D. J. (1998). Greek theories on eugenics. Journal of Medical Ethics, 24(4), 263–267. Güvercin, C. H., & Arda, B. (2008). Eugenics concept: From Plato to present. Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics, 14(2), 20–26. Huys, M. (1996). The Spartan practice of selective infanticide and its parallels in ancient utopian tradition. Ancient Society, 27, 47–74. Scanlon, T. F. (2002). "Only we produce men": Spartan female athletics and eugenics. In Eros and Greek athletics (pp. 121–138). Oxford University Press. Sneed, D. (2021). Disability and infanticide in ancient Greece. Hesperia, 90(4), 747–772.
By country and region
United States
Allen, G. E. (1983). The misuse of biological hierarchies: The American eugenics movement, 1900–1940. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 5(2), 105–128. Allen, G. E. (1989). Eugenics and American social history, 1880–1950. Genome, 31(2), 885–889. Allen, G. E. (1997). The social and economic origins of genetic determinism: A case history of the American eugenics movement, 1900–1940 and its lessons for today. Genetica, 99(2–3), 77–88. Allen, G. E. (2013). "Culling the herd": Eugenics and the conservation movement in the United States, 1900–1940. Journal of the History of Biology, 46(1), 31–72. Bix, A. S. (1997). Experiences and voices of eugenics field-workers: 'Women's work' in biology. Social Studies of Science, 27(4), 625–668. Black, E. (2003). War against the weak: Eugenics and America's campaign to create a master race. Four Walls Eight Windows. Boudreau, E. B. (2005). "Yea, I have a goodly heritage": Health versus heredity in the Fitter Family Contests, 1920–1928. Journal of Family History, 30(4), 366–387. Bruinius, H. (2006). Better for all the world: The secret history of forced sterilization and America's quest for racial purity. Alfred A. Knopf. Cogdell, C. (2004). Eugenic design: Streamlining America in the 1930s. University of Pennsylvania Press. Cohen, A. (2016). Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American eugenics, and the sterilization of Carrie Buck. Penguin Press. Comfort, N. (2012). The science of human perfection: How genes became the heart of American medicine. Yale University Press. Cooke, K. J. (1998). The limits of heredity: Nature and nurture in American eugenics before 1915. Journal of the History of Biology, 31(2), 263–278. Crnic, M. (2009). Better babies: Social engineering for 'a better nation, a better world'. Endeavour, 33(1), 12–17. Cuddy, L. A., & Roche, C. M. (Eds.). (2003). Evolution and eugenics in American literature and culture, 1880–1940: Essays on ideological conflict and complicity. Bucknell University Press. Currell, S., & Cogdell, C. (Eds.). (2006). Popular eugenics: National efficiency and American mass culture in the 1930s. Ohio University Press. Deutsch, N. (2009). Inventing America's worst family: Eugenics, Islam, and the fall and rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. University of California Press. Dorr, G. M. (2008). Segregation's science: Eugenics and society in Virginia. University of Virginia Press. Dowbiggin, I. R. (1997). Keeping America sane: Psychiatry and eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880–1940. Cornell University Press. English, D. K. (2004). Unnatural selections: Eugenics in American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. University of North Carolina Press. Farber, S. A. (2008). U.S. scientists' role in the eugenics movement (1907–1939): A contemporary biologist's perspective. Zebrafish, 5(4), 243–245. Gallagher, N. L. (1999). Breeding better Vermonters: The eugenics project in the Green Mountain State. University Press of New England. Gutiérrez, E. R. (2008). Fertile matters: The politics of Mexican-origin women's reproduction. University of Texas Press. Haller, M. H. (1963). Eugenics: Hereditarian attitudes in American thought. Rutgers University Press. Hansen, R., & King, D. (2013). Sterilized by the state: Eugenics, race, and the population scare in twentieth-century North America. Cambridge University Press. Jackson, C. (2000). Waste and whiteness: Zora Neale Hurston and the politics of eugenics. African American Review, 34(4), 639–660. Kluchin, R. M. (2009). Fit to be tied: Sterilization and reproductive rights in America, 1950–1980. Rutgers University Press. Kuby, W. (2018). Eugenic marriage laws and the continuing crisis of out-of-state elopement. In Conjugal misconduct: Defying marriage law in the twentieth-century United States (pp. 109–145). Cambridge University Press. Larson, E. J. (1995). Sex, race, and science: Eugenics in the Deep South. Johns Hopkins University Press. Lombardo, P. A. (2008). Three generations, no imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell. Johns Hopkins University Press. Luczak, E. B. (2015). Breeding and eugenics in the American literary imagination: Heredity rules in the twentieth century. Palgrave Macmillan. Ludmerer, K. M. (1972). Genetics and American society: A historical appraisal. Johns Hopkins University Press. Micklos, D., & Carlson, E. (2000). Engineering American society: The lesson of eugenics. Nature Reviews Genetics, 1(2), 153–158. Pernick, M. S. (1997). Eugenics and public health in American history. American Journal of Public Health, 87(11), 1767–1772. Pickens, D. K. (1968). Eugenics and the Progressives. Vanderbilt University Press. Rafter, N. H. (1992). Claims-making and socio-cultural context in the first U.S. eugenics campaign. Social Problems, 39(1), 17–34. Reilly, P. R. (1991). The surgical solution: A history of involuntary sterilization in the United States. Johns Hopkins University Press. Roberts, D. (1997). Killing the black body: Race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. Pantheon Books. Rosen, C. (2004). Preaching eugenics: Religious leaders and the American eugenics movement. Oxford University Press. Rydell, R. W. (1993). World of fairs: The Century-of-Progress expositions. University of Chicago Press. Schoen, J. (2005). Choice and coercion: Birth control, sterilization, and abortion in public health and welfare. University of North Carolina Press. Schoenl, W., & Peck, D. (2010). Advertising eugenics: Charles M. Goethe's campaign to improve the race. Endeavour, 34(2), 75–80. Selden, S. (1999). Inheriting shame: The story of eugenics and racism in America. Teachers College Press. Smith, J. D. (1993). The eugenic assault on America: Scenes in red, white, and black. George Mason University Press. Stern, A. M. (2005). Eugenic nation: Faults and frontiers of better breeding in modern America. University of California Press. Stern, A. M. (2007). "We cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear": Eugenics in the Hoosier heartland. Indiana Magazine of History, 103(1).