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Literary Cafe:

Darwin to Hitler:Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany

Wednesday, October 29th 2014    7:30 pm

By Richard Wiekart

An appearance by author Richard Wiekart

Location:   Santa Monica Screening Room 1526 14th Street, Santa Monica

Admission: $15.00

Parking: Street

About the Book: Rather than simply connecting the dots, so to speak, the author provides a sophisticated and nuanced examination of numerous German thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were influenced to one degree or another by Darwinist naturalism and their ideas, subtly drawing both distinctions and similarities and in the process telling a rich and colorful story. “

About the Author: Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State Univ., Stanislaus. He earned his Ph.D. in 1994 at the University of Iowa in modern European history with specializations in modern Germany and modern European intellectual history. His dissertation, which was subsequently published as a book, _Socialist Darwinism: Evolution in German Socialist Thought from Marx to Bernstein_, won the biennial prize of the Forum for History of Human Science for best dissertation in that field. He subsequently published with the scholarly publisher Palgrave Macmillan two books on the history of social Darwinism and evolutionary ethics in Germany: _From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany_ and _Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress_. He has also published a book on the theology of Bonhoeffer. In addition to his books, he has published many articles, review essays, and reviews in scholarly journals.