In Eugenic Design, Christina Cogdell charts new territory in the history of industrial design, popular science, and American culture in the 1930s by uncovering the links between streamline design and eugenics, the pseudoscientific belief that the best human traits could—and should—be cultivated through selective breeding.

Eugenic Design
Streamlining America in the 1930s

Christina Cogdell

2004 | 352 pages | Cloth $59.95 | Paper $24.95
American History | Technology and Engineering
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Controlling evolution
2. Products or bodies? Streamline design and eugenics as applied biology
3. Progenitors of the future: Popularizing streamlining and eugenics during the 1930s
4. "Flow is the word": Biological efficiency and streamline design
5. Race hygiene, product hygiene: Curing disease through sterilization
6. Future perfect? The elusive "ideal type"
7. Conclusion: Pseudoscience? Pseudostyle?