This volume is an extract of Whitney's unpublished autobiography, giving a partial account of various episodes in his life as a supporter and practitioner of eugenics. There are observations on the American Eugenics Society, the Eugenics Record Office, the Leopold-Loeb murder trial, as well as mentions of Charles B. Davenport, Clarence Darrow, Harry H. Laughlin, and Margaret Sanger.

In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office was founded in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, as a center for the study of human heredity and a repository for genetic data on human traits. It merged with the Station for Experimental Evolution in 1920 to become the Department of Genetics at the Carnegie Institution, and under the direction of Charles B. Davenport and later of Albert Blakeslee and Milislav Demerec, it became the most important center for eugenic research in the nation. However with intellectual currents shifting, the Carnegie Institution stopped funding the office in 1939. It remained active until 1944, when its records were transferred to the Charles Fremont Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. When the Dight closed in 1991, the genealogical material was filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah and given to the Center for Human Genetics; the non-genealogical material was not filmed and was given to the American Philosophical Society Library. Following the original order, the ERO Records are organized into thirteen series: I. Trait Files, 1670-1964 ; II. Trait Card Boxes, 1904-1939 ; III. Family Traits Card Boxes, 1920-1939 ; IV. RFT Submitters Card Catalog, 1910s-1930s ; V. Record of Family Traits, 1911-1940 ; VI. Fitter Family Studies, 1913-1936 ; VII. Field Worker Files, 1911-1926 ; VIII. Volunteer Collaborators, 1912-1939 ; IX. Pedigrees, 1828-1926 ; X. Harry H. Laughlin Files, 1915-1938 ; XI. Bibliographia Eugenica, 1734-1934 ; XII. Midget Schedules, 1919-1964 ; XIII. Index Card Boxes, 1910s-1930s.

The principal letters in this collection are to Otto L. Mohr and concern problems and progress in genetics, the Nobel Prize, and some account of Mohr and his family under the Nazi occupation of Norway, 1940-1945. Included with this group is a partial biographical essay on Calvin Blackman Bridges.

Sewall Wright ranks among the most influential figures in the field of population genetics during the 20th century, and made important contributions to biostatistics, biometrics, and evolutionary theory. These papers contain much of Wright's professional correspondence, scattered research notes, and drafts of a small number of papers.