Praise for the book In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics, by University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Victoria Nourse, has preceded its official publication on July 21, 2008 by W.W. Norton & Co.

Nourse’s book is a comprehensive study that "reads like a cliffhanger" (Kirkus Reviews) of the history of American eugenics, when thousands of men and women were sterilized in the 1920s and 1930s at asylums and prisons across the country.

Believing that criminality and mental illness were inherited, state legislatures across the country passed laws calling for sterilization of "habitual criminals" and "the feebleminded." The process was challenged in 1936, when inmates at an Oklahoma prison refused to cooperate. Inmate Jack Skinner was the first to come to trial, in a case that was taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Early interviews of Professor Nourse on the occasion of the book's release included a one-hour conversation on National Public Radio (The Diane Rehm Show) and in the The Boston Globe Sunday book section of July 27: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/07/27/a_warning_about_false_science/

In addition to In Reckless Hands, Nourse has written two forthcoming articles supporting the book’s constitutional conclusions, which will appear in the Duke and California law reviews in the fall and spring.

Nourse is the UW Law School’s Burrus-Bascom Professor of Criminal and Constitutional Law.

For more information on the book, see

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring08/006529.htm

Submitted by on July 18, 2008

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