The Hour of Eugenics"

Examining for the first time how eugenics was taken up by scientists and social reformers in Latin America, Nancy Leys Stepan compares the eugenics movements in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina with the more familiar cases of Britain, the United States, and Germany.

Nancy Leys Stepan is Professor of History at Columbia University.

This book serves as an important corrective to the myopic vision underlying much of the older historiography of the movement.... A sophisticated, non-reductionist treatment of an important topic.... A splendid book.

Stepan's warning regarding the politics of scientific interpretation in the future seems most appropriate.... This is an important book, meticulously done, and will be of significant value to Latin Americanists (especially Brazilianists), to historians of science and medicine and to those concerned with the history of ideas as well as those interested in the rise (and fall?) of eugenics.

Race is the primary focus in Nancy Leys Stepan's fascinating account of the fortunes of eugenic ideas and policies in the racially mixed setting of Latin America.... Stepan has now made a significant contribution to an international picture of the development of race and population policies. It is particularly useful in showing the remarkable plasticity of racist discourses on reproduction.

In a thoughtful and carefully researched book, Nancy Stepan examines the political, cultural, and scientific roles of eugenics in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico from the 1910s through the 1940s.... She skillfully shows the ideological dualities resulting from eugenic practices.... An excellent addition to the literature on eugenics and the history of science in Latin America.