A sharp, witty critique of the early-20th-century eugenics movement that exposes how appeals to “scientific” improvement can mask assaults on individual liberty, family life, and moral common sense; arguing that the presumption of a technocratic elite to redesign human society leads to coercion, hypocrisy, and dehumanization, the book defends democracy, human dignity, and ordinary ethical instincts against the cold arithmetic of social engineering.