International Journal of Comparative Psychology

Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice, and Genocide by Richard M. Lerner is an important book about the way in which biological determinist views of human behaviour have shaped social policy and have been used to justify persecution of certain groups, even to the ultimate horror of extermination of Jewish people by the Nazis. Lerner traces genetic explanations for human behaviour from Darwin, through scientists of the Nazi era to contemporary sociobiologists. He finds a continuous thread of ideas and alerts us to the political dangers of the impactof such thinking on social attitudes and policies.