Books by Professor Alain F Corcos

By the end of the twentieth century, biologists and anthropologists concluded that there are no human races. In Three Biological Myths: Race, Ancestry, Ethnicity, Professor Alain F. Corcos raises the question: What about ethnicity? Is it also a biological myth? He also asks a very important question in a time when people are busy looking for their roots: What did your ancestors transmit to you? The answers may surprise you.Human diversity occupies much of the talk these days, but few know about the biological process -- meiosis -- responsible for that extreme diversity. In Three Biological Myths: Race, Ancestry, Ethnicity, Corcos explains the process by which our extreme diversity occurs.

The idea that human races exist is a socially constructed myth that has no grounding in science. Regardless of skin, hair, or eye color, stature or physiognomy, we are all of one race. Nonetheless, scientists, social scientists, and pseudo-scientists have, for three centuries, tried vainly to prove that distinctive and separate "races" of humanity exist. These protagonists of race theory have based their flawed research on one or more of five specious assumptions: humanity can be classified into groups using identifiable physical characteristics human characteristics are transmitted "through the blood" distinct human physical characteristics are inherited together physical features can be linked to human behavior human groups or "races" are by their very nature unequal and, therefore, they can be ranked in order of intellectual, moral, and cultural superiority.The Myth of Human Races systematically dispels these fallacies and unravels the web of flawed research that has been woven to demonstrate the superiority of one group of people over another.

American public schools are in deep trouble. They are still characterized by ethnic and class segregation, grossly unequal teaching and learning facilities, and governed by mammoth bureaucracies with a plethora of contradictory policies and goals. For many low and medium income students, college is still not an option due to high tuition rates and poor primary school education. Is there any hope?Affirmative Action for All Our Children: And Why College Education Should Be Free tackles the hard truth and comes up with a compelling answer to solve all of these problems: the Federal Government should completely take over the education system. According to author Alain Corcos, such a takeover needs to include the federal government financing the entire education system from preschool to college, training teachers and paying their salaries, building and maintaining school facilities, developing the best curriculum to prepare all children to face today's world, and providing tuition-free college for students willing to give back by serving their nation in some capacity for two years between the ages of eighteen and twenty.Affirmative Action for All Our Children: And Why College Education Should Be Free lays out a detailed plan that paves the way for US public schools to become the best in the world. However, time is of the essence because any change will take at least two generations to affect the nation.

Alain F. Corcos was raised by a family of nonbelievers. When he grew up and pursued a career in science, he encountered nothing to challenge his lack of faith. In fact, he would have considered his atheism completely unremarkable if not for the reactions he confronted again and again:- How can you be moral when you don't believe in God?- If you know you can't prove God doesn't exist, doesn't that make you agnostic?- Aren't you afraid of death?In Atheism, Science, and Me, Dr. Corcos reminisces about satisfying his thirst for knowledge through research rather than religious doctrine or philosophy. While he has no interest in "converting" anybody to atheism, the good-natured enthusiasm with which he presents his worldview conveys the joys of a life unencumbered by religion.ALAIN F. CORCOS is a retired professor of botany. His previous books are Mendel, Genes and You; Race and Difference Among Us; Biological Experiments and Ideas; Race and You; Gregor Mendel's Experiments on Plant Hybrids: A Guided Study (with Floyd V. Monaghan); The Myth of Human Races; Four Short True Stories of a French Family; The Myth of the Jewish Race: A Biologist's Point of View; The Little Yellow Train: Survival and Escape from Nazi France (June 1940-March 1944); and Who Is a Jew? Thoughts of a Biologist: An Essay Dedicated to the Jewish and Non-Jewish Victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

I lived with my parents and my brother in southern France under the German occupation from 1940 to 1944. We did not practice any religion, but we were Jews according to Hitler because of our ancestry. And since we had "Jewish blood" we were destined to perish. My direct family survived, which is attributed to them refusing to have anything to do with "racial" laws. However, I lost two uncles, two aunts, and two cousins in death camps.In March 1944, my brother and I, seventeen and eighteen years old, respectively, escaped from France through the Pyrenees, surrendered to the Spanish police, and were jailed for a week in Spain. We gained our freedom by being exchanged for two hundred pounds, each, of American wheat. We joined the Allied forces in North Africa and eight months later we landed in America to be trained as Air Force personnel.When the war was over, I came back to France and headed the family flower farm. I found that the methods for raising flowers were medieval and I decided to go back to the U.S. to learn more modern techniques. I landed in New York City on my way to San Luis Obispo, California, where I became a student in horticulture -- although my degrees are in botany and plant pathology. I taught, as a university professor, in genetics, and I have always considered myself a geneticist.I never forgot my experience in France as a teenager, and I never accepted the idea that I was considered a Jew because my ancestors were. My knowledge of genetics gave me a categorical answer to the eternal question of "Who is a Jew?" The answer is: Someone who follows the rites of Judaism. Jews belong to a religious federation -- no matter how loose it is. It is their religion that separates them from the world, not something biological such as genes.

Alain Corcos, author of The Little Yellow Train, presents different moments in history from the perspective of his family and friends. This is a must-read for anyone who wishes to gain insight into how historical events impact the everyday lives of those who experience them.

Between 1940 and 1944, when Alain Corcos was a teenager, the Germans systematically plundered the French countryside to feed their own armed forces and civilians. Both the Nazis and the fascist Vichy government forced everyone with "Jewish blood" to register as Jews, condemning those who complied to death in concentration camps. The Little Yellow Train chronicles the years of occupation in France, describing the Corcos family's struggles to survive. In addition to finding enough food to sustain themselves, they needed to forge records and identification cards in order to conceal the fact that some of their ancestors were Jewish. When the SS began kidnapping young French men and women to work in German factories, the author and his brother decided that the time had come to escape and join the Allied forces overseas.