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Author Spiro, Jonathan Peter.

Title Defending the master race : conservation, eugenics, and the legacy of Madison Grant / Jonathan Peter Spiro.

Imprint Burlington, Vt. : University of Vermont Press ; Hanover, NH : Published by University Press of New England, ©2009.

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 New Britain, Main Library - Non Fiction  305.8 SPI    Check Shelf
Description xvi, 487 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 443-466) and index.
Contents The evolution of scientific racism -- Big-game hunter -- The Bronx Zoo -- From conservation to preservation -- Wildlife management -- From mammals to man -- The eugenics creed -- Conserving the Nordics -- The passing of the great race -- Grant's disciples -- Creating the refuge -- Culling the herd -- Saving the redwoods -- Extinction -- Nordic and anti-Nordic -- The empire crumbles -- The ever-widening circle : the Third Reich -- The passing of the great patrician - Appendix A: organizations served by Madison Grant in an executive capacity -- Appendix B" the interlocking directorate of wildlife conservation -- Appendix C: selected members of the Advisory Council of the ECUSA -- Appendix D: selected members of the Interlocking Directorate of Scientific Racism.
Summary "Scholars have labeled Madison Grant everything from "the nation's most influential racist" to "the greatest conservationist that ever lived." His life illuminates early twentieth-century America as it was heading toward the American Century, and his legacy is still very much with us today, from the speeches of immigrant-bashing politicians to the international efforts to arrest climate change. This insightful biography shows how Grant worked side-by-side with figures such as Theodore Roosevelt. Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to found the Bronx Zoo, preserve the California redwoods, and save the American bison from extinction. In commemoration of his conservation efforts, the world's tallest tree, located in northern California, was dedicated to Grant in 1931." "But Madison Grant was also the leader of the eugenics movement in the United States. He popularized the infamous notions that the blond-haired blue-eyed Nordics were the "master race" and that the state should eliminate members of inferior races who were of no value to the community. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Grant's ideas appeared in the sermons of ministers, the pages of America's leading magazines, and the speeches of presidents, Grant's behind-the-scenes machinations land manipulation of scientific data convinced Congress to enact the immigration restriction legislation of the 1920s that eliminated the immigration of non-Nordic races. Grant also influenced many states to pass coercive sterilization statutes under which tens of thousands of Americans deemed to be unworthy were sterilized from the 1930s through the 1970s, and he collaborated with Southern white racists to pass laws banning interracial marriage. Although most of the relevant archival materials on Madison Grant have mysteriously disappeared over the decades since Grant's death in 1937, Jonathan Peter Spiro has devoted many years to reconstructing the hitherto concealed events of Grant's life. His astonishing feat of detective work reveals how a founder of the Bronx Zoo wound up writing "The passing of the Great Race" (1916), the book that the Nazis later used to justify the exterminationist policies of the Third Reich."--Jacket.
Subject Grant, Madison, 1865-1937.
Grant, Madison, 1865-1937 -- Influence.
Conservationists -- United States -- Biography.
Hunters -- United States -- Biography.
Big game hunting -- History.
Wildlife management -- United States -- History.
Zoologists -- New York (State) -- New York -- Biography.
Eugenics -- United States -- History.
Racism -- United States -- History.
United States -- Race relations.
Eugenics -- history. (DNLM)D005053Q000266
Sterilization, Involuntary -- history. (DNLM)D013244Q000266
Grant, Madison, 1865-1937. (OCoLC)fst00408074
Big game hunting. (OCoLC)fst00831614
Conservationists. (OCoLC)fst00875578
Eugenics. (OCoLC)fst00916432
Hunters. (OCoLC)fst00964151
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) (OCoLC)fst00972484
Race relations. (OCoLC)fst01086509
Racism. (OCoLC)fst01086616
Wildlife management. (OCoLC)fst01175323
Zoologists. (OCoLC)fst01184692
New York (State) -- New York. (OCoLC)fst01204333
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Grant, Madison 1865-1937 (DE-588)124321143
University of South Alabama (DE-588)5241550-8
Grant, Madison Jurist.
United States.
Chronological Term Geschichte 1900-1980.
Genre/Form Biographie.
Biographies. (OCoLC)fst01919896
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Biographies.
Biographies.
ISBN 9781584657156 (cloth ; alk. paper)
1584657154 (cloth ; alk. paper)
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