"The most systematic and comprehensive effort yet made to assess the role played by Darwinian ideas in the writings of English-speaking social theorists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries." --Isis "In seeking to set the record straight, Bannister cuts through the amalgam with an intellectual shredder, exposing the illogic and incompatibility involved in fusing Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species with Herbert Spencer's Social Statics... Bannister's familiarity with relevant texts and their reception by contemporary social theorists, scholars, and critics on both sides of the Atlantic is impressive." --Journal of Interdisciplinary History "A fine contribution to Anglo-American intellectual history." --Journal of American History

• Acknowledgments Introduction: The Idea of Social Darwinism 1. The Scientific Background 2. Hushing Up Death 3. Philanthropic Energy and Philosophic Calm 4. Amending the Faith 5. William Graham Sumner 6. The Survival of the Fittest Is Our Doctrine 7. Neo-Darwinism and the Crisis of the 1890s 8. A Pigeon Fanciers' Polity 9. The Scaffolding of Progress 10. The Nietzsche Vogue 11. Beyond the Battle: The Literary Naturalists 12. Imperialism and the Warriar Critique Epilogue: From Histrionics to History Notes Index