A Disability History of the United States (ReVisioning American History)

Publishers WeeklyThis impressive, instructive book by Nielsen, a professor of history and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay (The Radical Lives of Helen Keller), seeks to define the pivotal role ofpeople with disabilities in our nation's past and their contribution to our laws, policy, economics, popular culture, and our collective identity. Disability, with its presumed need for dependency, challenges the American ideal of independence and autonomy.Nielsen uses various concepts of disability and dependency that go to "the heart of both human and American experience." She accurately notesthe difference of mind-body beliefs of the Native Americans from the Europeans who brought disease and death with them; the colonial definition of those considered insane or undesirable; andthe many institutions housing the disabled.