The Genius Factory - David Plotz

This book is very interesting and bit shocking. The book explores the following:
 1)What is "The Repository of Germinal Choice" nicknamed "Nobel Prize Sperm Bank"?
 2)What were the thought behind it and who were they?
 3)How it collapsed?
 4)How the children born through that are doing now?

In 1980 Robert Graham, an American businessman opened an sperm donation bank specially to collect from high IQ men. The rationale behind the idea was that high IQ men will create high IQ babies so that the world will be better place. But his idea based on "The IQ of the average Negro is twenty two points lower than average white American's". He believed that too many stupid people were breeding stupid kids.And he was very adamant on not giving sperm to black women.According to the author ," Robert Graham was a racist (which is very clear) but not always a white supremacist .He ranked blacks and Hispanics below whites in intelligence but ranked Asians above whites"

"There's nothing worse than a wish unfulfilled, except a wish fulfilled."

The author wrote series of articles in Slate asking customers and children of the sperm bank to contact him. This book is the result of the contacts the author made. He unearthed very interesting thing about the sperm bank and ultimately end up write biography of the sperm bank. Apart from the racism , this author explores the relationships between the children born through the bank and the parents. Very intriguing , when the author meets these kids and the stories of when the spoke about their unknown fathers .Sometimes the author without knowing lets these people discover important details.The very sad part of the whole story is that none of the kids produced from the bank were super smart, they have above average .Most these kids were raised by single mothers.

As he explores , at one point of time he himself wanted to donate sperm to know how everything works. His first hand experience with those people made this book very interesting . But the author thinks Graham's idea was not bad as it was aimed to produce high intelligent people after interviewing and meeting most of the employees of the sperm bank .But he is against "negative eugenics ".

The book is interesting , intriguing , surprising and sometimes touching. Worth reading and get to know little bit of history.