Superior

The Return of Race Science

By: Angela Saini

Narrated by: Angela Saini

Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

'We can draw lines across the world any way we choose, and in the history of race science, people have. What matters isn’t where the lines are drawn, but what they mean.'

Modern science is pivotal in our understanding of race - not because of the lines that thinkers through the centuries have chosen to trace but because, once grouped, what they thought belonging to these groups signified.

In Superior, award-winning science writer Angela Saini explores the concept of race, both past and present. At its heart, race is the belief that we are born different, in character and intellectually as well as in appearance. It’s the notion that as groups of people we have certain innate qualities that are not only visible but which may also have helped define the passage of progress, of the success and failure of the nations our ancestors came from.

But modern science has moved on from these beliefs, finding reality to be much more complicated. Taking us from Darwin through the civil rights movement to 23andMe, Saini examines how deeply our present is influenced by our past and the role that politics has so often had to play in our understanding of race. Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious history and damaging consequences of race science - and the unfortunate reasons behind its apparent recent resurgence across the globe.

©2019 Angela Saini (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"In this essential book, Angela Saini deftly shows how science and racism have long been intertwined, why that pernicious history continues to this day, and why 'race science' is so deeply flawed. Deeply researched, masterfully written, and sorely needed, Superior is an exceptional work by one of the world's best science writers." (Ed Yong)

"This is an essential book on an urgent topic by one of our most authoritative science writers." (Sathnam Sanghera)

This is an urgent and important book. It contains a warning: you thought racism might be on its way out of science? You thought wrong." (Observer)

Best book on race science … if that’s a thing

Loved authors voice , brilliant performance . In depth detailed study and a totally new outlook in the world of racism . I wish everyone read this book .