Ever since Charles Darwin first wrote about the "descent of man," the differences between the human races have been the subject of the most enduring controversy over the "origin of the species." Evolutionary theory has been used and abused as a scientific justification or intellectual weapon by racists and anti-racists alike. Careers have been made and broken, lives dedicated or sacrificed, societies destroyed, and wars fought over what Darwin called the "value of the differences" among humankind.

The Evolution of Racism is a history of both evolutionary theory and ideas about race and racism. In an intellectually engaging narrative that mixes science and history, theories and personalities, Pat Shipman explains the original controversy over evolution in Darwin's time; the corruption of evolutionary theory into eugenics; the conflict between laboratory research in genetics and field work in physical anthropology and biology, which gave rise to the "new synthesis" of modern evolutionary biology, which in turn cast new light on the age-old debate over nature verses nurture; and the continuing controversies over the heritability of intelligence, criminal behavior, and other traits.