A Disability History of the United States

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A DISABILITY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

By Kim E. Nielsen

Beacon Press

240 pp. $25.95

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IN THE INTRODUCTION TO THEIR INFLUENTIAL 2001 volume The New Disability History, editors Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky rightly noted that American historians have largely overlooked disability in their narratives. It is therefore invigorating to read Kim Nielsen's A Disability History of the United States, which focuses attention on people with disabilities, some of whom are known, and many of whom have been forgotten.

Nielsen excavates the long-buried history of physical difference in America and shows how …