Writing in 1927 for an 8-1 Supreme Court majority in Buck vs. Bell, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld a Virginia law authorizing sterilization of the “feebleminded.”

In “Imbeciles,” Adam Cohen outlines the collision course between Carrie Buck -- a woman who was poor and unfortunate but no imbecile -- and a scion of one of Boston’s oldest families who was wrongly reputed to be liberal.

Cohen's chapters on Holmes make clear that Buck was no anomaly; Holmes was a longtime eugenicist who’d previously contemplated infanticide to weed out “undesirables.” He admitted that writing the Buck decision had given him “pleasure,” noting that “sooner or later one gets a chance to say what one thinks.”

But in three preceding portraits -- of the doctor, scientist and lawyer who did most to uphold Virginia’s law -- Cohen also makes clear that Holmes himself was no anomaly, in an era when rising hysteria about how America had lost its way led to an all-out vilification targeting the poor, women, blacks and immigrants.

Carrie Buck was institutionalized and eventually sterilized because she’d become pregnant, having been raped by a nephew of the foster family to whom she'd been assigned when her single mother couldn’t care for her.

The centerpiece of the evidence against Buck was a test flunked by nearly half of 1.75 million American enlistees during World War I. That same test resulted in even higher percentages of immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe being designated “feebleminded.” (TNS)

“Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck”

By Adam Cohen

Penguin (402 pages, $28)