In a sweeping work that traces the idea of race for more than three centuries. Audrey Smedley shows that "race" is a cultural invention that has been used variously and opportunistically since the eighteenth century. Race was not a product of science but a folk classification reflecting a new form of social stratification and a rationalization for inequality among the peoples of North America.

This second edition adds new material to some early chapters and expands its coverage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with additional analyses of science's role in the preservation of race ideology through IQ tests, the rise of Nazi race ideology, and the beginning of disintegration of the racial worldview after World War II.