Acknowledgments

GENES MAY BE SELFISH in a limited metaphorical sense, but there can
be no gene for selfishness when I have so many friends and col-
leagues willing to offer their aid. I thank Ashley Montagu, not only
for his specific suggestions, but also for leading the fight against
scientific racism for so many years without becoming cynical about
human possibilities. Several colleagues who have written, or are
writing, their own books on biological determinism willingly shared
their information and even let me use their own findings, some-
times before they could publish them themselves: G. Allen,
A. Chase, S. Chorover, L. Kamin, R. Lewontin. Others heard of
my efforts and, without solicitation, sent material and suggestions
that enriched the book greatly: M. Leitenberg, S. Selden. L. Mesz-
oly prepared the original illustrations in Chapter 6. Perhaps Kro-
potkin was right after all; I shall remain with the hopeful.

A note on references: In place of conventional footnotes, I have
used the system of references universally found in scientific litera-
ture—name of author and year of publication, cited in parentneses
after the relevant passage of text. (Items are then listed by author
and by year for any one author in the bibliography.) I know that
many readers may be disconcerted at first; the text will seem clut-
tered to many. Yet, I am confident that everyone will begin to "read
through" the citations after a few pages of experience, and will
then discover that they do not interrupt the flow of prose. To me,
the advantages of this system far outweigh any aesthetic deficit—
no more flipping back and forth from text to end-notes (no pub-
lisher will set them all at the bottom of the page any more), only to
find that a tantalizing little number yields no juicy tidbit of subsid-