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Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s. By Christina Cogdell. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. xviii, 328 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8122-3824-9.)
In this American studies monograph, Christina Cogdell lovingly thanks her family for encouraging her "to love using my mind" and "to express my own opinions" (p. xvii). Cogdell's hook certainly shows the influence of such an environment. With limited documentary evidence, she has harnessed a vivid imagination to produce an extended essay that connects eugenic theory and industrial design in the 1930s.
Seeking to understand the origins of streamlining, Cogdell draws on visual culture analysis to hypothesize links between eugenic theory and industrial design practice. For evidence, she turns to seventeen eugenicists and consultant designers whose work collectively left the "stamp of eugenic ideology upon the material culture" of the 1930s...