Prologue
CHAPTER 1
Deep Time
CHAPTER 2
It’s a Small World
CHAPTER 3
Scientific Priestcraft
CHAPTER 4
Inside the Fold
CHAPTER 5
Race Realists
CHAPTER 6
Human Biodiversity
CHAPTER 7
Roots
CHAPTER 8
Origin Stories
CHAPTER 9
Caste
CHAPTER 10
The Illusionists
CHAPTER 11
Black Pills
Afterword
Acknowledgments
References
Index
Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist whose print and broadcast work has appeared on the BBC and in the Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, the Economist, and Science. A former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, she won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Kavli Science Journalism gold award in 2015. Saini has a master’s in engineering from Oxford University, and she is the author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story and Geek Nation: How Indian Science Is Taking Over the World.
“An important and timely reminder that race is ‘a social construct’
with ‘no basis in biology.’”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“A well-argued, timely, sobering wake-up call for those who believe
science is always objective and apolitical. Highly recommended for
academic researchers, journalists, and general science readers
alike.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review
“[A] brilliant critique of ‘race science’ . . . this is an
important and, in an era of rising racial tensions, must-read book,
especially for those most sure they do not need to read it.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Superior: The Return of Race Science makes the compelling case
that scientific racism is as prevalent as it has ever been, and
explores the way such backward beliefs have continued to evolve and
persist. And it couldn’t be more timely.”
—Bitch
“A rigorously researched and reported journey from the
Enlightenment through nineteenth-century imperialism and
twentieth-century eugenics to the stealthy revival of race science
in the twenty-first century.”
—Financial Times
“In Superior, Saini expertly chronicles the broader social forces
that have reinvigorated race science . . . . For such a weighty
topic, Superior is a surprisingly easy-to-read blend of science
reporting, cultural criticism, and personal reflection.”
—Slate
“Whether you think of racist science as bad science, evil science,
alt-right science, or pseudoscience, why would any contemporary
scientist imagine that gross inequality is a fact of nature, rather
than of political history? Angela Saini’s Superior connects the
dots, laying bare the history, continuity, and connections of
modern racist science, some more subtle than you might think. This
is science journalism at its very best!”
—Jonathan Marks, author of Tales of the Ex-Apes: How We Think About
Human Evolution
“Angela Saini’s investigative and narrative talents shine in
Superior, her compelling look at racial biases in science past and
present. The result is both a crystal-clear understanding of why
race science is so flawed, and why science itself is so vulnerable
to such deeply troubling fault lines in its approach to the world
around us—and to ourselves.”
—Deborah Blum, author of The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s
Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth
Century
“Some writers have tackled the sordid history of race science
previously, but none have gone so deep under the skin of the
subject as Angela Saini in Superior. In her deceptively relaxed
writing style, Saini patiently leads readers through the
intellectual minefields of ‘scientific’ racism. She plainly exposes
the conscious and unconscious biases that have led even some of our
most illustrious scientists astray.”
—Michael Balter, author of The Goddess and the Bull
“In this essential book, Angela Saini deftly shows how science and
racism have long been intertwined, why that pernicious history
continues to this day, and why ‘race science’ is so deeply flawed.
Deeply researched, masterfully written, and sorely needed, Superior
is an exceptional work by one of the world’s best science
writers.”
—Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us
and a Grander View of Life
“Angela Saini’s Superior: The Return of Race Science is nothing
short of a remarkable, brilliant, and erudite exploration of what
we believe about the racialized differences among our human bodies.
Saini takes readers on a walking tour through science, art,
history, geography, nostalgia and personal revelation in order to
unpack many of the most urgent debates about human origins, and
about the origin myths of racial hierarchies. This beautifully
written book will change the way you see the world.”
—Jonathan Metzl, author of Dying of Whiteness
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