The Skull Measurer's Mistake: And Other Portraits of Men and Women Who Spoke Out Against Racism

Enlightening stories of courageous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century men and women who defied the racial prejudices of their communities. In 1981, Stephen Jay Gould exposed the bad science behind nineteenth-century American studies that "proved" that Anglo-Saxons were superior because they had larger brains. In The Skull Measurer's Mistake, Sven Lindqvist tells the story of Friedrich Tiedemann, the nineteenth-century German doctor who dared to speak out against such racist science when it was first practiced. Along with Tiedemann's story, The Skull Measurer's Mistake recounts the antiracist efforts of Benjamin Franklin, Helen Hunt Jackson, Joseph Conrad, and others who argued and fought against prejudice and persecution.