Human biodiversity : genes, race, and history /

Marks traces the history of scientific attempts to describe and account for human biological variation. Covering the 17th century to the present, his study stresses the derivation of scientific ideas from the social problems and values with which they share history. Tracing two frameworks through time (the Linnean racial approach and the Buffonian population approach), Marks shows the fallacies inherent in trying to closely define races, and describes the promise of modern genetics to help sort humans into neat population groups with distinctive biological as well as behavioral traits. Yet the genetic research that was expected to validate the divisions of the human species undermined it by revealing a high degree of genetic variability. Humans are both polymorphic (varying within groups) and polytypic (varying between groups). Although this book shares some topics with Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (CH, Apr'82), it covers more historical ground, is more evenhanded in its evaluation of historical events, and provides considerable biological detail. A highly readable, thought-provoking, and comprehensive treatment of popular and scholarly interest in race and human variation. General readers; upper-division undergraduates and above. S. A. Quandt; Wake Forest University