i'm using this book as a text for an undergraduate class that I'm teaching on race and class in Latin America. Its a very accessible text for undergraduates and generally free of confusing academic jargon.

Stepan argues that understanding eugenics in Latin America can help us to understand better both the history of science and the history of Latin America. Latin America has generally been left out of intellectual histories, as most scholars have preferred to view it as a passive receptor of ideas rather than as a generator of its own scientific knowledge. Through her analysis of eugenics as practiced in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, Stepan easily refutes these generalizations about Latin American intellectual underdevelopment. Additionally, her work echos that of Thomas Kuhn and his arguments about cultural changes that lead to changes in scientific knowledge, rather than the other way around. Stepan shows that Latin Americans did indeed understand eugenic theories, but that they adapted them to try to solve persistent social problems that seemed to be linked to mixed race people and national underdevelopment. Because of the focus on using eugenics to solve social problems, Latin American eugenics developed very differently from its scary counterparts in the U.S. and Nazi Germany.

This book is well researched, drawing on literature that treats the history of science both inside and outside of Latin America, as well as incorporating archival research from various Latin American groups devoted to developing eugenic sciences.

This has been a really good book to teach with and it has provoked a lot of thoughtful discussion from students. ( )