Customer Reviews

The Races of Europe

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In the early 1970s I sold books about the white race in Silver Spring, Maryland with my partner, a very talented fellow who helped me to get the enterprise going even though it had to start on the kitchen table of our apartment. Eventually he took full responsibility and operated for many years on his own. Our company was called White Legion books, and although we handled just about every book anyone ever recommended about the white race, there was no book more sober, professional, and fascinating than Carlton Coon's "The Races of Europe." A lot of readers who are familiar with older classics on this subject know that such books tend to be politically biased in favor of Germans, Icelanders, and other nationalities believed by the far right to be superior representatives of the race. Carlton Coon, however, does not promote such obsolete beliefs. And it's unfortunate that more people interested in this subject, especially right wing political activists, couldn't learn from this book why they should give up the ideas of superiority which devaluate many whites. The misguided still laud the abilities of Nordics over other members of the white race; such as Alpines and Mediterraneans. That this is foolish is evidenced by the fact that it is vitually impossible to tell with total certainty, without some detailed DNA examination, exactly what sub-racial category someone is in. There are just too many jokers in the deck, and even a person fitting the "Nordic profile" can spiritually be in some other category anyway. When someone comes along on the political scene who ignores these facts, such as George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party, it can have fatal consequences for the advocate. Rockwell was assassinated by John Patler, who was once the most active and loyal stormtrooper of his group; in fact, this party member was highlighted in the original edition of Rockwell's autobiography "This Time the World" with a large photograph (It's since been censored out). Patler, a Greek American with a dark complexion, one day realized that he was in a racial category considered by the National Socialist ideology to be a second class position - a Mediterranean. If you ever have the opportunity to see Carlton Coon's book, which could be available from a really decent college or university library collection on anthopology, be sure to look at the hundreds of photographs that are included for the purpose of identifying the many types of white people that exist. If you look carefully, and you have a natural eye for it, you may even see someone who looks just like yourself, or like your family members. These "types" were created because of the long periods of time in Europe when people did not move around very much. And while it's true that the Europeans of America are often much more blended than the types seen in Carlton Coon's book, you will still be able to see what "types" comprise the faces you've long been familiar with. I found it quite easy to locate faces so familiar that I see them every day, and they were easy to verify because there's supporting information below each photograph to confirm each determination by the few geographic locations associated with them in Europe. If there is anyone who has the opportunity to reprint this book, I would urge them to do it as soon as possible; for it's obvious that a lot of people never want to see this book available again.

Mr. Highduke below is misleading in his review. Carleton Coon
never approached his topics in a less than scientific way.
Political correctness has not yet entered academia to hide the truth. Mr. Coon merely refined his definitions and did not renounce anything or change his mind in the sense that one is wrong about something. The paragraph in "The Origin of Races"
reads: "Races like the Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, East Baltic,and Dinaric...are neither subspecies nor, in a strict
sense, local races, although some local races may be defined in these terms. These words have also been used in the sense of types, which can be picked out of local populations. One may find a Spaniard who is typically Nordic in the midst of a population Of Mediterraneans, including his own brothers. In a sense the situation is genetically comparable to finding a man of blood group B whose father's group was A. Types selected in this fashion are interesting to observe, and we notice them every day. Whether or not they reflect the origins of a population in one way or another, we must remember from the taxonomic point of view such types are not races but simply the
visible expressions of the genetic variability of the intermarrying groups to which they belong."
This is exactly what "The Races of Europe" demonstrated.
If the book were a textbook on dog types, no one would care. But people are somehow invulnerable to the laws of heredity. I refuse to be dumbed down for someone else's political agenda.
Carleton Coon was a professor at Harvard and at the U. of Pennsylvania. He is deceased and cannot defend his works of science, but I am alive and I can and I do.

I first found and read this book from our local library... it is a masterpiece to anyone interested in anthropology. Although the cost was about $78, I decided that I had to own it and bought a new copy. The new edition I received was certainly new and clean, but the print was not quite of the quality that the library edition had. The B&W photographs/plates of the library edition were high quality, glossy prints; whereas, this new edition has disparagingly mediocre reproductions of them.

This textbook differs so from nearly all others in it's deapth of treatment of the subject of the complex movements of peoples in Europe, Eastern Asia and Northern Africa. Each chapter could have been produced as an entire text. Of course descriptive terminology of physical anthropology must be mastered and detailed maps are needed for a thorough examination, but this text attempts to pull together all of the finds and studies available throughout the world of 1939. Since the page count of the edition mentioned here in Amazon is identical to the orignal 1939 edition, I must assume the later book is a reprint. I am anxious to learn if Carleton Stevens Coon updated his work with post-war findings. I find the study of these complex movements similar to a study of, say, astronomy. To most people, such a study would prove equally as original. In recent years our PBS Nova show has featured some abstract regional discoveries in Anthropology complete with an hour of speculation. But readers of the Coon text are already familiar with the directions of their conclusions. Possibly few have read Coon's masterful research compilation. Coon was begining his illustrious career when he wrote, "Races of Europe." I am anxious to read his work from later life.

My review is not on Coon's work itself, but on the quality of the binding offered here.

For the money, I feel the book should be of higher quality. The paper is cheap; the book is overly bulky for its dimensions; and, in consequence, it's clumsy to hold and because it's so thick, the left-hand-side pages become difficult to read the deeper into the tome you get. For $70, one should expect better quality - a bigger, better-bound edition.

Although very rare in print, this offering by Amazon is indeed the same masterpiece of anthropological research penned by Carleton S Coon, and it's certainly new and clean, but it is NOT the original edition with high quality, glossy B&W photographs/plates like the original edition still found in many public libraries.

The B&W photographs/plates of the original edition were high quality, glossy prints, whereas, this new edition has only mediocre, margainally-acceptable reproductions of them. The print of this edition is not the same high quality as the original edition either.

This work is available online for free download and the pics online are of the same high quality as the original edition. This edition is a $[...] offering, three times that of its value, but if you, like me, are glad to find it still in hard-cover print at all, it will suffice as an addition to your personal reference library.

Regardless of enormous advances that biology has made in the last decades,certainly racial typology has its own value in tracing,for example,human migrations whithout whose some historical aspects cannot be fully understood.Unlike the German literature in the 1930's,which is littered with ethnocentric superstition,in Coon's textbook we are finding blow to fallacies that something like "White Race" exist.What do Osteuropids have in common with Atlantomediteranians that sets them in special status vis-a-vi Mongoloids or Aethiopids for example?Our current misperception about races derives because we think only about "racial conglomerates",we see differencies that are obvious "at glance" without giving second thought.Although a little bit of obsoletness can be detected here and there,nevertheless this is good starting point for racial studies,together with two classics-"Mankind Evolving" by Th.Dobzhansky and "Race" by John R. Baker.

a very detailed, well researched, anthropological view of the peoples of Europe - without stereotypical biases. It's a tome you'll keep coming back to time and time again.