In meticulously tracing [Carrie Buck's] ordeal, Cohen provides a superb history of eugenics in America, from its beginnings as an offshoot of social Darwinism — human survival of the fittest — to its rise as a popular movement, advocating the state-sponsored sterilization of 'feebleminded, insane, epileptic, inebriate, criminalistic and other degenerate persons.'
Cohen’s narrative of the legal case that enshrined these [sterilization] practices is a page-turner, and the story it tells is deeply, almost physically, infuriating...It is unfortunate that Carrie Buck remains a cipher at the center of her own story, one told through the well-documented lives of four powerful men. But considering the limited material Cohen had to work with...the format of Imbeciles makes sense, and Cohen deals with his subject sensitively.
Cohen skillfully frames the case within the context of the early 20th century eugenics movement...Although the book suffers from repetition of the legal arguments as the case proceeds through the courts, its considerable power lies in Cohen’s closer examination of the principal actors.
An unsuspecting innocent, an ambitious country doctor, a nation briefly infatuated with a despicable ideology — these would all seem to be the elements of a captivating narrative. Yet Imbeciles is often a boggy read, and a disorganized one at that. Mr. Cohen, now a senior writer at Time magazine, repeats himself early and often, which suggests that the basic outline of a propulsive story eluded him...He takes the reader down a couple of biographical sinkholes, giving us pages of back stories when a simple paragraph would have done the trick.
Cohen provides a detailed backstory for each character who appears, wandering sometimes confusingly far afield. But the panoramic view is instructive: one can see these men marching their agendas forward over bridges formed by social connections ... The culminating shock of Imbeciles—a book full of shocking anecdotes—is the fact that Buck v. Bell is still on the books and was cited as precedent in court as recently as 2001. Forced or coercive sterilizations never entirely went away either.
Imbeciles combines an investigative journalist’s instinct for the misuse of power, a lawyer’s analytic abilities, and a historian’s eye for detail to tell this compelling and emotional story. It is built around Cohen’s portraits of the key players in the drama that culminated in a miscarriage of justice: the sterilization of Carrie Buck under the authority of the state of Virginia.
Cohen sets the context for the sterilization of Carrie Buck and thousands of others: a panic, fed by the pseudoscience of eugenics, that so-called feebleminded people constituted a threat to public safety and the nation’s gene pool. And he demonstrates to a fare-thee-well how every step along the way, our system of justice failed...Imbeciles leaves you wondering whether it can happen here — again.
