ADAM COHEN, a former member of the New York Times editorial board and senior writer for Time magazine, is the author most recently of Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was president of volume 100 of the Harvard Law Review.
"This well-written narrative of legal history demonstrates what
happens when the powerful and elite in society fail to protect the
powerless and poor...Imbeciles combines an investigative
journalist's instinct for the misuse of power, a lawyer's analytic
abilities, and a historian's eye for detail to tell this compelling
and emotional story...[The book] serves as a cautionary tale about
what may happen when those who have, or obtain, power use the
institutions of government and the law to advance their own
interests at the expense of those who are poor, disadvantaged, or
of different 'hereditary' stock."--Los Angeles Review of Books
"[IMBECILES is] the story of an assault upon thousands of
defenseless people seen through the lens of a young woman, Carrie
Buck, locked away in a Virginia state asylum. In meticulously
tracing her ordeal, Cohen provides a superb history of eugenics in
America, from its beginnings as an offshoot of social
Darwinism--human survival of the fittest--to its rise as a popular
movement, advocating the state-sponsored sterilization of
'feeble-minded, insane, epileptic, inebriate, criminalistics and
other degenerate persons.'"--David Oshinksy, The New York Times
Book Review (cover review) "In this detailed and riveting study,
Cohen captures the obsession with eugenics in 1920s America...
Cohen's outstanding narrative stands as an exposé of a nearly
forgotten chapter in American history."--Publishers Weekly (starred
review) "IMBECILES indicts and convicts any number of villains,
albeit with proper judicial restraint. Cohen mostly lets the facts
speak for themselves...[and] skillfully frames the case within the
context of the early 20th century eugenics movement...[The book's]
considerable power lies in Cohen's closer examination of the
principal actors...Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. But
thanks to Adam Cohen, we shall never forget it." --Boston Globe
"Cohen...tells the shocking story of one of the greatest
miscarriages of justice in U.S. history...and demonstrates to a
fare-thee-well how every step along the way, our system of justice
failed...The last chapter of the case of Carrie Buck, Cohen
reveals, hasn't been written...IMBECILES leaves you wondering
whether it can happen here -- again."--Minneapolis Star Tribune "An
important new book...which details the eugenic horror that still
haunts the American legal system... Cohen's narrative of the legal
case that enshrined these practices is a page-turner, and the story
it tells is deeply, almost physically, infuriating... Cohen reminds
us of the simple, shocking fact that while forced sterilizations
are rare today, they remain legal because American courts have
never overturned Buck v. Bell."--The New Republic "Imbeciles is
lively, accessible and, inevitably, often heart-wrenching."--Nature
"Searing...In this important book, Cohen not only illuminates a
shameful moment in American history when the nation's most
respected professions--medicine, academia, law, and the
judiciary--failed to protect one of the most vulnerable members of
society, he also tracks the landmark case's repercussions up to the
present."--Booklist (starred review) "The story of Carrie
Buck...illustrates society's treatment of the poor, of minorities
and immigrants, and other populations considered 'undesirable.'...
This thought-provoking work exposes a dark chapter of American
legal history."--Library Journal "Imbeciles is a revelatory book.
Eye-opening and riveting. In these pages, Adam Cohen brings alive
an unsettling, neglected slice of American history, and does so
with the verve of a master storyteller." --Alex Kotlowitz, author
of There Are No Children Here "Cohen revisits an ugly chapter in
American history: the 1920s mania for eugenics...[in this]
compelling narrative....He also tells a larger story of the weak
science underlying the eugenics cause and the outrageous betrayal
of the defenseless by some of the country's best minds...A shocking
tale about science and law gone horribly wrong, an almost forgotten
case that deserves to be ranked with Dred Scott, Plessy, and
Korematsu as among the Supreme Court's worst decisions."--Kirkus
(starred review ) "Adam Cohen knows how to recognize a story and
has the gift to tell it with disarming fidelity to facts that make
us cringe. In that vein, Imbeciles made me question my longstanding
admiration for the mind and character of Oliver Wendell Holmes and
my fading hope that the Supreme Court can sometimes save us from
ourselves."--Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The
Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution "'Three
generations of imbeciles are enough'--these are among the most
haunting words in the history of the Supreme Court. In Imbeciles,
Adam Cohen unearths the secret history of the case that moved
Oliver Wendell Holmes to utter that notorious sentence. The book
provides a stark portrait of the resilient eugenics movement--and a
welcome warning about its sinister appeal."--Jeffrey Toobin, author
of The Oath and The Nine
"A powerfully written account of how the United States Supreme
Court collaborated in the involuntary sterilization of thousands of
poor and powerless women. Cohen's Imbeciles is that rarest of
books--it is a shocking story beautifully told, and also the
definitive study of one of the darkest moments in the history of
American law."--John Fabian Witt, author of Lincoln's Code and The
Accidental Republic
"Imbeciles is at once disturbing, moving, and profoundly important.
With the zeal of an investigative journalist and a novelist's
insight, Adam Cohen tells the story of an injustice carried out at
the highest levels of government, and how it reverberated across
history and remains with us today. Cohen is one of our most gifted
writers, and he has turned the story of the Supreme Court and
American eugenics into one of the best books I've read in
decades."--Amy Chua, John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law, Yale Law
School, and author of The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
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