Graduate students and faculty members in the Penn State Department of Anthropology recently received little green books in the mail.

Most threw them directly in the garbage.

Although the books were published by the benign-sounding Charles Darwin Research Institute, a quick glance revealed them to be a collection of statistics trying to sort blacks, whites and Asians into categories based on their race.

"For the past twenty years, I have studied race differences in brain size, intelligence, sexuality, personality, growth rate, life span, crime and family stability," writes the author of the book. "On all of these traits, Orientals fall at one end of the spectrum, blacks fall at the other end and whites fall in between."

The book is titled Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective.

"It's just junk science," said Dean Snow, head of Penn State's anthropology department. "This stuff happens, and you just can't allow yourself to get agitated about it."

Jay Silverstein, a lecturer in the department, sent a letter to Penn State President Graham Spanier asking the university to tell the publisher to stop sending out the books.

"There's nothing illegal about it as far as I can tell," Silverstein said. "This is sort of like peppering racist literature on people who aren't asking for it."

Silverstein said, as far as he could tell, the book was sent to every faculty member and almost every graduate student in the department.

Snow said that would total between 60 and 70 people. A similar mailing of books went out about a year ago, he said.

The books came in plain white envelopes with no return address, Snow said.

Snow speculated that whoever sent the books might have obtained a mailing list of people registered with a national anthropological organization.

While it is unclear who sent the books, the author and publisher are no secret.

The 106-page book is an abridged version of a 400-page volume by J. Philippe Rushton, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

According to his Web site, Rushton's research has led the university to unsuccessfully try to fire him.

"People like him are an embarrassment to the faculty," Snow said. "I know a couple of people out at Western (Ontario) but I haven't called them, out of pity mostly."

Rushton founded the Charles Darwin Research Institute in part to fund more research into racial differences, according to its Web site.

"CDRI is resolved to help us better understand our similarities, our differences, our past, and our future, however upsetting those findings may be to entrenched religious or political dogmas," the site says.

Henry Harpending, a National Academy of Sciences member and former Penn State anthropology professor, is quoted on the page of acclaim at the front of Rushton's book, calling his theories "essentially the only game in town."

Harpending, now an anthropology professor at the University of Utah, said he laughs about being quoted in the book because he is also quoted in other books that take the opposite viewpoint.

A foundation sends the books to anthropologists unsolicited, Harpending said.

"I think that it is pretty tasteless and that it antagonizes people," Harpending said in an e-mail.

Rushton is a reputable psychologist and has done some solid research, Harpending said, but his theories draw fire from all sides of the racial spectrum.

"I think he has more courage than he does brains," Harpending said.

In the anthropology department here, most of the books have made their way to the recycling bins.

"They're using one on the fifth floor to prop the door open," Snow said. "All the rest have disappeared."