In "The Mismeasure of Man" (1981), Stephen Jay Gould takes on biologists and psychologists who used scientific explanations to justify race, class and gender discrimination in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like Steven Pinker, Gould has the ability to explain conceptually complex material without any dumbing down.

Gould argues that 19th century scientists such as Paul Broca, Samuel George Morton, and Cesare Lombroso all filtered their data through their own assumptions in order to place Northern Europeans at the pinnacle of the military, business, and sciences. Gould also shows how such 20th century scientists as H. H. God-dard, Lewis Terman, R. M. Yerkes, Charles Spearman, and Sir Cyril Burt all misused statistics to rank individuals, classes, and races.

A reader of Gould can see that he believed in the freedom and dignity of his fellow humans beings. He was fighter and had style.