In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics,   ISBN:9780393065299

Customer Rating: 

I have just finished reading "In Reckless Hands". It is a remarkable book. It manages to combine extensive and impeccable research, a clear and transparent ethical sense, and an eminently readable writing style - a feat all too rare in authors, academic or otherwise. It took an enormous effort for the author to write this book. In doing so, she has given us all a treasured gift.

Customer Rating: 

IRH is about the back-tory behind the Skinner case and very informative about the Eugenics Movement in America in general. Interesting and well written, IRH was very worth while from both a legal and a historical perspective.

Recommended.

Customer Rating: 

I picked this up hoping for a clearer understanding of why SKINNER did not overturn BUCK v. BELL. My interest is in the eugenics movement in the U.S., and--more specifically--in what cautionary tales we should learn from our own dark history that might deter us from over-zealous embrace of genetic technologies to cure social ills.

Nourse certainly provided me with an explanation of why SKINNER did not overturn BUCK v. BELL, and she also provided valuable insights into the larger social factors that held eugenics in place--the Depression and fear of crime, as well as the more familiar anti-immigrant fervor that arouse with industrialization--and began to weaken its hold (no, it was not JUST horror at the Nazi experience).

The book is of potential interest and value to people with a wide variety of interests and competences. For a book that delves as far as it does into technical judicial interpretation, it is quite accessible. I am contemplating using it for a Science and Values course, and look forward to seeing how students respond to it. Meanwhile, I am sending it as a holiday present to several friends, and recommend that course of action.

Customer Rating: 

I didn't think there were too many bits of Oklahoma history that I hadn't at least heard of . . . until I ran across a blurb about the German atrocities in World War II and except for a Supreme Court case in Oklahoma similar events "could" have taken place in the U.S. I was fascinated and shocked when I read this book to realize how close we were walking a similar path, maybe not for the same reasons but so many were convinced that eugenics, or at least the form of denying "undesirables" to procreate, was the answer to the decline of the world. Although many states had laws or guidelines for unwanted sterilization Oklahoma became the battleground for stopping it when some prisoners at McAlester and some local lawyers took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. I also discovered that Jack Skinner, the prisoner who was the focus of the lawsuit, even went to the same high school I did (although quite a few years before!) The book is excellent although a little tedious is spots for this reader because of the legalistic terms but it's something that's necessary. A must read for any Oklahoma history student or anyone else that appreciates the social development of this country.

Customer Rating: 

This book on such a monumental, but to the lay person, unfamiliar, case was wonderfully written. Starting it Sunday afternoon was not a wise decision since it made closing the pages for sleep Sunday night very difficult. Fortunately I had time today to finish.

There is great attention to detail, dedication to making "legalese" easily understood by all, and an unassuming tone of writing.