"This is a hard book to read, but worth the anguish. It describes the terrible treatment of infants at the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport, Iowa in the 1930s who were deemed unfit for adoption because they scored low on IQ tests. It also reports on attempts by path-breaking psychologists in Iowa to correct the eugenic assumptions that underlay the babies’ treatment and labeling, and the appalling reactions of some distinguished professors to their efforts. It’s deeply researched, well written, and deliberately limited in its scope. Eugenics in the U.S. involved much more than orphanages, and much more than academic debates, but psychologist Marilyn Brookwood has documented one strand of resistance to eugenic beliefs and practices. That in itself is a very useful contribution."

"The bracing revelation of Brookwood’s book is that these essential lessons in countering the effects of neglect and disadvantage came frighteningly close to disappearing without a trace. Discovering that past helps us recognize just how far we still have to go to provide opportunities to help all young minds realize the promise they possess."

"...it might be difficult to imagine a time when almost all professionals, including psychologists, believed that intelligence was static throughout one’s lifetime and was completely hereditary. That is the setting of Marilyn Brookwood's new book, The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children's Intelligence. It recounts the story of the four Iowa psychologists who discovered that children’s intelligence can change dramatically due to environmental factors..."

"...In chronicling a major intellectual battle of the 20th century, The Orphans of Davenport offers scientists a cautionary, timeless tale about groupthink’s power to subvert the dispassionate analysis of new findings. It is also yet another sobering reminder of how specious science can be wielded to justify evil ends—with the attendant suffering of those least able to defend themselves"

In this July 2021 talk, Olson Graduate Assistant Rich Dana sits down with author Marilyn Brookwood and University Archivist David McCartney to talk about the researcher's process in the archives. Hear the perspective of both curator and researcher when it comes to telling one story.

"...Brookwood centers her attention on two groundbreaking psychologists: Howard Skeels and Marie Skodak, based at the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, who, in the 1930s, compared the IQ’s of children raised in overcrowded orphanages, where they were isolated and ignored, with children either adopted or sent to live in an institution for women diagnosed as mentally deficient, where they received loving attention by the inmates...Skeels and Skodak found remarkable improvement among children placed in a nurturing, stimulating environment. As soon as their findings were publicized, they were viciously attacked by the influential psychologist Lewis Terman, who insisted that intelligence was an “innate, unmodifiable entity”..."

"...With this riveting history of an unsung scientific breatthrough in the 1930s, psychologist Brookwood tells how U. S. State and federal governments, backed by mainstream psychologists had for decades enforced eugenicist policies. Authorities had institutionalized and even sterilized tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children deemed “feebleminded” on the basis of specious intelligence tests. Verdict: a remarkable unsung history told with empathy, nuance and a knack for character driven storytelling."

"...Brookwood provides insight into the Iowa researchers’ methods, and skillfully draws from primary sources to explain how racist and classist attitudes and fierce criticism from the era’s eugenicists prevented the station’s groundbreaking studies from initially gaining traction..."