Races Books

Over the years The Pioneer Fund has been maligned and misunderstood. This book presents their side in a literate and concise reporting of the science and the researchers they have helped fund. I found the book to be very informative and well written.

As the recently elected president of The Pioneer Fund, a charitable foundation that gives grants for the study of human genetic variation, it is only fair that I declare my interest before reviewing a book that chronicles the Fund's history, its benefactors, its directors, and most of all, its academic researchers and their findings. Perhaps the best known is the Minnesota Study of Identical Twins Reared Apart, which reunited about 100 twins separated early in life from around the world. The identical twins turned out to have an extraordinary number of traits in common while the fraternal twins were not nearly as alike. The Texas Adoption Project studied 300 families who had adopted one or more children. It found that in both personality and intelligence, the adoptees turned out to be much more like their biological families than their adoptive families. Together these two research projects demonstrated that about 50% of individual differences in IQ and personality are due to heredity. Other Pioneer funded studies used state-of-the-art Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques to find that IQ scores are related to brain size, while others found that IQ scores are related to speed of neural transmission and brain evoked potentials. Pioneer funded research has also shown that IQ scores have real-life significance, being among the best predictors of work productivity, health, and longevity.

More controversial has been Pioneer's support of research on racial differences. One project was Audrey Shuey's (1958) massive compilation of every study of Black White IQ score differences, later revised by Osborne and McGurk (1982). Research by Arthur Jensen examined bias in tests (1980) and the general factor of intelligence (1998). Studies by Richard Lynn, Philip E. Vernon and myself made the race IQ debate international in scope, extending it beyond IQ scores by showing that East Asians, Whites, and Blacks obtained the same mean ranking on over 60 different traits in countries all around the world. (See Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations, and my Race, Evolution, and Behavior).

Lynn, himself a Pioneer Fund grantee and largely responsible for four very important findings about human variation (the Asian IQ advantage, the effect of nutrition on IQ, the secular rise in IQ, and the average African IQ of 70), has provided an invaluable insider's guide to the Fund's history and accomplishments. My predecessor, the late Harry F. Weyher, contributed an extensive, informative, and at times amusing Preface in which he cogently noted that even Pioneer's severest critics pay it the compliment of having produced more intellectual "bang for the buck" than any comparable organization. Both Lynn and Weyher should be commended for telling the story of the Pioneer Fund's record of accomplishment.

Sea Of Dreams: Racing Alone Around The World In A Small Boat, by Adam Mayers is the riveting story of a fast-paced, around-the-world race for the "Around Alone" yacht race. Derek Hatfield in his yacht "Spirit of Canada" raced against twelve others around the world, beginning in New York Harbor, with stops in England, South Africa, New Zealand, and Brazil, and finally ending in Newport, Rhode Island. Sea Of Dreams is an amazing tale and very highly recommended reading, especially for anyone in search of a gripping and nautically inclined true-life story of a fearless pursuit of a dangerous race on the high seas.

This a great book, about the other solo around the world race. It reads like a thriller and taught me a lot of things I didn't know about solo sailing. Derek Lundy's Godforsaken Sea which was about the 96 Vendee was gripping and so is this one about the 02 Around Alone when the Cdn. Derek Hatfield was rolled over at the Horn and Brad Van Liew who lives in Charleston set new speed records for the race. His race was just as amazing. The other American guy Tim Kent was also a great story, getting stronger and stronger as the race went on.

That's how this book starts. From that sentence forward, you will sit glued to your seat reading - mezmerized, shocked, enthralled - unable to tear yourself away. You will be haunted by the women and their stories. Short bios of the writers are included in the back of the book.

Ouch! Suicide! Infidelity! Monogamy? Bereavement... These are some of the issues touched upon by the voices of women in this no holds-barred anthology. I'm a guy, but I've been struggling with a non-monogamous relationship, and have taken some comfort in the un-censored stories of real-life relationships described by some of the authors. It's pretty cool to hear confessions of infidelity from a woman's point of view. The material presented is a welcome anti-dote to the innumerable myths about how "normal" relationships are supposed to be. I really like the diversity of point of view in this collection.

The second part of the series concentrates on shorter distances (800m to 5,000m/5miles). Along with general information and discussions the most useful part of the book are the practical day-by-day 10-week schedules. The schedules are very specific - depending on time goals, initial preparation and the distance. Excellent book!

This book gives you everything you want and more! I followed this closely when I had a crummy track coach in high school and my times ended up being exactly at the race pace I was training for. I have used these workouts in coaching as well and have seen great success with them. A lot of the books that come out nowadays are just commentaries on runners--this one gives you the year-round training schedules you've been looking for.

The author, United States Air Force Colonel Wally G. Vaughn, is an outstanding researcher, scholar, historian and writer. Colonel Vaughn has pieced together the missing links in important Civil Rights quests of the early 1950's and 1960's. His first hand accounts of the Selma campaign, has produced critical testimony to the struggle for equal rights worldwide. Colonel Vaughn and his co-author have put together a genius work!

An excellent and necessary documentation of a neglected segment of history.

I read this book about a year ago. I can't believe I'm only getting around to writing a review on it now. The author does a great job of exposing the myth of race. I have been preaching the same thing for years, but when I try to tell people that there is no such thing as race, they don't seem to get it. With this book it's hard not to get it. The author puts all of the facts and arguments together in such a cogent way that it exposes the idea of race as the myth that it is. The idea of race was invented 500 years ago to justify Western Europeans genocide in the colonial world, and there are no phenotypic or genotypic bases for it. If we go back just 600 years we all have several million ancestors. My father was born in Ireland. He was what we call black Irish. My earliest ancestors in Ireland were probably Spanish sailors whose ships sunk with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. So my roots actually go back to Spain, and Spain was occupied for hundreds of years by the Moors (Muslims from Africa). So there is a good chance that my great, great, great, etc. grandfather was also the ancestor of Kunta Kinta. What does that make me? Am I white or Black? How many ancestors do we have to have from a certain region to establish ourselves of one race or the other?

In Shattering The Myth Of Race: Genetic Realities And Biblical Truths, Dave Unander addresses the concept of race from a Christian perspective while surveying race and economics; slavery and abolition in the United States; the development of genetics as a biological science; DNA comparison studies; and evolutionary genetics as an argument for "racial superiority". Of particular interest is Unander's concluding chapter "A Christian Perspective on Race: Personal Reflections". Very highly recommended reading for personal and group studies, the informative, thoughtful text is enhanced with an epilogue and a list of references.

This novel will take your breath away. It is horrendous that not enough information has been written about others that sufferd through the scourge of Nazism. And there's scant amount written about Blacks in Nazi Germany. The Rhineland Bastards (children of mixed race in pre-war Germany) were the first victims of the Nazi murder machine. But little is known or has been written about them. Their skin color placed them in a most precarious position: impossible to hide and no amount of bleaching the hair would change that. But Mr. Masaquoi's book is enthralling and exquisitely rendered. One particular passage made me cringe with excitement: being a child and wanting to be like his peers, this young boy of mixed race wanted to join the Nazi Youth like his other friends were doing, knowing little of the atrocious policies of the Third Reich. Well, his mother, fearing she couldn't just tell him NO decided that a better lesson would be to take him to the local Nazi Youth headquarters and attempt to sign him up for the organization....well, you'll have to buy this book to find out what happened. In all, this is a tremendous work and one that has not received, unfortunately, as much attention as many other books on personal accounts of the Holocaust.

The publication of Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out was groundbreaking not only because it examined the Afro-German experience, one that had been highly ignored or denied, but also because it provided a forum for Afro-German women to discuss issues that affected them. This was difficult before the publication of this book because of the way that German historians had examined what they called "the problem" of the "occupation babies," and because Afro-Germans had generally been raised isolated from other Afro-Germans. This book discusses the concept of German identity and why Afro-Germans have been a marginalized group because of the concept of Germany as a homogenous white nation.

This book confronts the ignorance concerning Afro-Germans in Germany and exposes the reader to instance after instance of subtle racism including and ways in which different expressions concerning race, color, and mixedness are used derogatorily and what connotations they have. It explains why racism is often an accepted part of the social structure and exposes the fallacies that are used to justify ignorance and violent behavior. The personal experiences give an intimate perspective to a history that can otherwise be viewed objectively. By attempting to educate the public with this book, the contributors create a context for themselves in German history and modern German culture. The existence of Afro-Germans is no longer a mystery, nor denied; instead it is claimed by them.

When a society is ignorant of its own history it can not begin to remedy the problems within. Because it provides a community for people formerly isolated, because it examines a history not previously discussed, because it educates a public in the hopes that some change will come about: for those reasons is Showing Our Colors a groundbreaking book.

Following the out break of sit-ins accross the upper south, originated by and participated in largely by Black college students, the students founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, in an attempt to bring some order to these spontaneous direct actions.

In 1960, a group of thes students decided to bring democracy to Mississippi and other deep south states. Zinn was with them, and (being a historian, after all) wrote down what he saw. As Zinn admits, this is not a history. It is closer akin to contemporaneous journalism.

What Zinn does is dramatize just how far from democracy and the rule of law Mississippi was in the early 60's (at least for Black people--but it is hard to believe that this form of autocratic government didn't spill over into the "White" government as well.

The Federal Constitution did not apply. State law did not apply. A student standing on the steps of the federal building (of all places) is arrested, beaten to unconsciousness, and sent to hard labor at the notorious Parchman Farm. All for simply watching a line of black citizens attempt to register to vote. All this while the FBI stands by, and does nothing but take notes.

Looking back from the perspective of 40 years on, we tend to glamorize the civil rights movement--the Supreme Court decided Brown, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, King gave a speech about his dream, and then Congress solved the problem by passing the Civil Rights Law.

What Zinn makes clear is that while all of this was happening on the national level, the real battle was taking place person by person in the deep south. The heroes were not limited to Dr. King and Rosa Parks, but included hundreds of yuoung people (the members of SNCC) who turned their backs on middle class educations, and literally put their bodies on the line (and all too often in the hospital) to force the power tructure in the South to recognize the rule of law.

The courage and creativity of these young men and women comes through dramatically in Zinn's account--it is inspiring, and terrifying at the same time. Terrifying just how close to tyranny this country was in the early 60's. Inspiring to know that young people had the courage, intelligence, determination, and focus needed to battle that tyranny under the most oppressive conditions this country has known since the civil war. Remember, the horror of Emmit Till was only a few years in the past when these men and women decided to openly challenge the existing power structure.

And best of all, they won. Read the book.

The Officers and Members Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement. They went into the dangerous areas of the South and attempted to register voters and challenge local segregation ordinances. Howard Zinn documents this in this social history of SNCC. He also gives information on Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis and other prominent SNCC leaders.

Jackson does an excellent job of uncovering the critical role that social scientific research played in the Supreme Court's classic Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. While many people equate the Brown decision with Clark's classic doll studies, Jackson provides an extremely even-handed look at role that Clark played in the decision, as well as pointing out the numerous studies carried out by other scholars that influenced the Supreme Court. An excellent read for anyone who is interested in this classic decision.

Jackson does an excellent job of uncovering the critical role that social scientific research played in the Supreme Court's classic Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. While many people equate the Brown decision with Clark's classic doll studies, Jackson provides an extremely even-handed look at role that Clark played in the decision, as well as pointing out the numerous studies carried out by other scholars that influenced the Supreme Court. An excellent read for anyone who is interested in this classic decision.

This is an eclectic collection of testimonials by those occupying America's most infamous "no mans land," the intersection on the nation's Social grid between the dominant racist culture and those struggling to integrate it -- despite the nation's deep reservoir of racism.

In every instance, these are quiet but profoundly heroic tales about those struggling out on the very slippery precipice of our society trying to maintain a modicum of dignity while not genuflecting under the withering pressure to conform to the omnipresent racist norms and standards. Almost all have willingly paid the price in living lives, often of quiet desperation, always of self-imposed denial and always by distorting their own lives to coexist with a racist way of life.

More than anything else, this is a mostly upbeat reminder of how deeply embedded the newest form of racism, the seemingly more benign, yet much more (passive) aggressive form, is.

Even though this group straddling America's no mans land is slowly increasing, they remain stranded "in" but never completely "of" America. They are often brutally cut off by both sides of the color divide from the normal connections one would find in a more civilized society. Yet, they push on relentlessly, surprisingly making a much larger impact on the racist culture than their numbers would suggest.

Thank God for their courage! For the sake of the rest of us they must keep pushing!

In a more perfect world, or in an America that took its cherished values and principles seriously, there would be no need for these stories, or a need for telling them. This book proves, with dramatic "lived" evidence that in America, despite exaggerated claims to the contrary: the racists are still winning. Five Stars.

Emily Bernard tackles a complex and often uncomfortable subject with grace, humor, and true feeling. Her selection of contributors is intriguing and they approach the subject from all sorts of angles you might not expect. Truly a means to opening a very important dialogue.