Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant Kindle Edition

A good biography of Madison Grant, well researched and with many illuminating anecdotes.

A common cartoon theme has a conflicted person with a devil sitting on one shoulder and whispering in that ear, and an angel doing likewise on the other. Madison Grant is perhaps the most extreme example imaginable of such a conflicted person. He was arguably the single most important figure in jump-starting the conservation movement in the United States and had a heroic role in saving the California redwoods and the bison. He was also arguably the most vicious "pseudoscientific" racist of the Twentieth Century, and his book "The Passing of the Great Race" (1918) influenced American society and policy for the worse for decades and ultimately became a mainstay of Nazi ideology--a personal favorite of Hitler. Grant preferred to remain behind the scenes as much as possible. He was a masterful organizer and manipulator of public opinion and the political process for good and for evil. His typical modus operandi was to create multiple organizations with broadly-interlocking directorates, flooding media and public discourse with what appeared to be an irresistible "critical mass" of quality judgments. He was the puppet master who engineered the extreme and explicitly racist restrictions on immigration enacted in the 1920s. The notion that immigration restriction was an "environmental" or "resource conservation" issue, which he pushed in tying his two passions together, is still heard today. In fact, the current debate on immigration reform recycles many themes Grant and his various allies and fronts exploited some 90 years ago to great effect. That in itself is troubling.
Today's conservationists would justly honor Grant's memory were conservation his only legacy. Instead, the linkage between conservation and bigotry is a legacy nearly all of us would prefer to forget. But we mustn't forget it-- lest we be doomed to repeat it.
Spiro's book is a tour de force, achieved despite the convenient "disappearance" of much of Grant's paper trail. It is also a superb history of the interface of policy, politics, and science in the first third of the 20th Century. It is rich in quotable quotes and anecdotes, and not the least of its achievements is to document the fact that most of the leaders of the eugenics movement in America, who were so concerned about "breeding better babies" and who clearly considered themselves to be of superior stock, never married or had children! That includes Grant, who preferred the company of like-minded men in manly sports like big-game hunting and in exclusive, finely-appointed clubs where women were not welcome.
This is a very important book that deserves a wide readership.

Jonathan Spiro is a superb historian who uses a broad range of sources and sharp insights into American society to reveal the elite WASP men who pushed for restricting immigration in order to keep their social class dominant, created vast National Parks to preserve habitat for the prize big game they hunted--even built the Bronx Zoo to be sure the species didn't become extinct--and maneuvered to bring down anthropologist Franz Boas, spokesman against their racism. Spiro shows us the contradictions in the character of Madison Grant, Boas' nemesis and leader of the WASP eugenics movement, who never married nor had a child, nor ever had to earn a living. This book is important social history and, so well written, a pleasure to read.

Jonathan Spiro has written a masterpiece! His book is much more than a biography of Madison Grant. The first 100 pages alone would make a lucid book on the history of the conservation movement in the U.S., with fascinating details of who did what. Other authors have begun their discussion of Madison Grant emphasizing his part in promoting eugenics, with less emphasis on his role in saving America's biological legacy. By starting with Grant's central role in conserving America's wildlife and forests, in the context of his being a member of the New York elite at a time of maximum immigration, Spiro has helped me to understand how an educated, caring person could have embraced the extreme racism of eugenics. He is a rare author that has created a page-turner from a exceedingly complex topic that is easily made overwhelming or boring. He is a genuine story-teller.

This book provides a mesmerizing portrait of a largely forgotten- yet hugely important-figure in modern American history. Grant and his eugenics cronies wielded immense influence over contemporary politics, but have largely dissappeared from our society's conscience today.

In addition to detailing Grant's "exploits" in the "field" of scientific racism (such as advocating for forced sterilization of the handicapped and exclusion of jewish immigrants), the book contains in-depth coverage his role in the early conservation movement. Spiro's coverage of Grant's efforts in conserving California's redwood forests is particularly well written. Finally, Spiro's ability to explain the links between Grant's conservationist streak and his faith in eugenics are insightful and thought-provoking.

Historians will appreciate the highly detailed appendix and plentiful endnotes.

I'm confused. I bought the Kindle version and the Chapter links in the table of contents just takes me to a list of footnotes or a bibliography of sources for that chapter. There's no text or narrative in these chapters. What am I missing?

Let's call it an eye-opener.
I bought it because i wanted to find out about the origins of America's racism. To my utter surprise, i found out about its rebirth as a "science"
and its widespread prevalence during the 20's (meaning, not even a hundred years ago). I read about forced sterilizations, experiments with live-human subjects, the brutal re-classification of Americans based on spurious "racial science" and America's unbounded hostility to females and anyone deemed "unfit:.
I also learned that Americans more or less wrote the script for the massive ethnic cleansing we call the Holocaust. and found the hidden poisoned Spring from which one of our two major parties is still drinking.
I am now reading all I can find.,