Daniel J. Kevles's new book will strike a responsive chord in many quarters. Ever since Arthur Jensen suggested in 1969 that different "racial" genetic endowments accounted for differences in I.Q. test performance between blacks and whites, that old chestnut, nature versus nurture, has been hotly debated in many forums. In writing this book Kevles has been mindful of that debate. Eugenics or the science of breeding a better race has become a word of "ugly connotation" (p. ix). In the first half of this century much cruelty and oppression have resulted from eugenics and the misinterpretations of genetic science, he argues. In more recent times, Kevles insists, the subject of eugenics "casts a shadow over all contemporary discourse concerning human genetic manipulation" (p. ix). It is this from the past to the present and future theme or perspective Kevles uses to frame his book. Kevles is not the first historian of American or British eugenics. But he is the first to write a unified account of eugenics in what he dubs AngloAmerica from the late nineteenth century to the present day. He has written a history of the British and American eugenics movements and the two national sciences of human genetics in the belief that these four phenomena form a consolidated larger whole. The book has many virtues. His discussion of human genetics since 1930 is a genuine contribution. Some of his interpretations of the eugenics movement are fresh. The book is based upon thorough research; it provides much information; and it is extremely well written. Its chief disappointment is that its analytical and interpretive apparatus does not always support the burdens placed upon it. The book's ultimate assumptions may be challenged, and the parts of the book do not constitute the larger whole claimed for them. The 1930s mark the watershed in this enchantingly told story. Before then, organized eugenics prospered far more in public life than human genetics did in the worlds of science. Man could not be easily studied with the techniques and concepts then available to genetics. Kevles begins with chapters on the