Wow, this book is intense. It elucidates some of the origins of attitudes toward miscegenation and people of mixed race and the laws that resulted by excerpting, chronologically, a variety of books, articles and essays. Notably, it covers some scary territory in eugenics including one essay on Nazi sterilization of Afro-Germans that demonstrates how the Nazis were inspired by American racial policies. Some of the views represented here made me laugh out loud, mostly because I didn't know what else to do. (e.g., "Some browns had 'the long legs of the Negro and the short arms of the white, which would put them at a disadvantage in picking up things off the ground'.") One of the things I've learned from this book is that ideas developed before the scientific method became popular sometimes formed the basis for hypotheses that were then "proven" by the scientific method. I've also learned that 'race' is an entirely social construction.