We look forward to seeing you on your next visit to the library. Find a location near you.

A Disability History of the United States
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Book Cover
Average Rating
Published:
Beacon Press 2012
Status:
Checked Out
Description
The first book to cover the entirety of disability history, from pre-1492 to the present
 
Disability is not just the story of someone we love or the story of whom we may become; rather it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. Covering the entirety of US history from pre-1492 to the present, A Disability History of the United States is the first book to place the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it’s a familiar telling. In other ways, however, it is a radical repositioning of US history. By doing so, the book casts new light on familiar stories, such as slavery and immigration, while breaking ground about the ties between nativism and oralism in the late nineteenth  century and the role of ableism in the development of democracy.
 
A Disability History of the United States pulls from primary-source documents and social histories to retell American history through the eyes, words, and impressions of the people who lived it. As historian and disability scholar Nielsen argues, to understand disability history isn’t to narrowly focus on a series of individual triumphs but rather to examine mass movements and pivotal daily events through the lens of varied experiences. Throughout the book, Nielsen deftly illustrates how concepts of disability have deeply shaped the American experience—from deciding who was allowed to immigrate to establishing labor laws and justifying slavery and gender discrimination. Included are absorbing—at times horrific—narratives of blinded slaves being thrown overboard and women being involuntarily sterilized, as well as triumphant accounts of disabled miners organizing strikes and disability rights activists picketing Washington.
 
Engrossing and profound, A Disability History of the United States fundamentally reinterprets how we view our nation’s past: from a stifling master narrative to a shared history that encompasses us all.
Also in This Series
Formats
Adobe EPUB eBook
Works on all eReaders (except Kindles), desktop computers and mobile devices with reading apps installed.
Kindle Book
Works on Kindles and devices with a Kindle app installed.
OverDrive Read
Need Help?
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
More Like This
Other Editions and Formats
More Copies In LINK+
Loading LINK+ Copies...
More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
10/02/2012
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780807022030
ASIN:
B007UH4FBG
Reviews from GoodReads
Loading GoodReads Reviews.
Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Kim E. Nielsen. (2012). A Disability History of the United States. Beacon Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Kim E. Nielsen. 2012. A Disability History of the United States. Beacon Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Kim E. Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States. Beacon Press, 2012.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Kim E. Nielsen. A Disability History of the United States. Beacon Press, 2012.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
LibraryOwnedAvailable
Shared Digital Collection10
Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
dc8847e2-9cb1-c955-d931-da17996bf894
Go To Grouped Work
Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 17:57:18
Date Updated:
Dec 21, 2022 07:23:08
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 09:26:24
Last Metadata Change:
Jul 11, 2023 20:47:18
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 09:26:27
Last Availability Change:
Feb 29, 2024 23:40:27
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

OverDrive Product Record

readingOrder
2
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/4B4/090/F3/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/4B4/090/F3/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
formats
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780807022030
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 219258
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • identifiers:
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 219258
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B007UH4FBG
      • name: Kindle Book
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780807022030
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 219258
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • id: ebook-overdrive
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9780807022023
mediaType
eBook
primaryCreator
    • role: Author
    • name: Kim E. Nielsen
title
A Disability History of the United States
seriesId
1320394
dateAdded
2017-01-19T23:14:00Z
contentDetails
      • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=859114
      • type: text/html
      • account:
          • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
          • id: 1151
sortTitle
Disability History of the United States
crossRefId
859114
series
ReVisioning History
id
4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3
starRating
4.2

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain
False
formats
      • fileName: ADisabilityHistoryof_9780807022030_859114
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 2109426
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780807022030
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 219258
      • rights:
            • type: Copying
            • value: 0
            • type: Printing
            • value: 0
            • type: Lending
            • value: 0
            • type: ReadAloud
            • value: 0
            • type: ExpirationRights
            • value: 0
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • onSaleDate: 10/2/2012
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
            • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/4B4/090/F3/DisabilityHistoryoftheUnitedStates9780807022030.epub
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: ADisabilityHistoryof_859114
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 219258
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B007UH4FBG
      • name: Kindle Book
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • onSaleDate: 10/2/2012
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
            • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/4B4/090/F3/DisabilityHistoryoftheUnitedStates9780807022030.epub
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: ADisabilityHistoryof_9780807022030_859114
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780807022030
            • type: PublisherCatalogNumber
            • value: 219258
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-overdrive
      • onSaleDate: 10/2/2012
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-epub-adobe
            • url: https://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/4B4/090/F3/DisabilityHistoryoftheUnitedStates9780807022030.epub
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
keywords
      • value: Education
      • value: genealogy
      • value: us history
      • value: Biography
      • value: Historical
      • value: Law
      • value: Business
      • value: parenting
      • value: society
      • value: philosophy
      • value: american history
      • value: American
      • value: Civil Rights
      • value: feminist
      • value: psychology
      • value: feminism
      • value: americana
      • value: United States History
      • value: History
      • value: Essays
      • value: Pop Culture
      • value: Leadership
      • value: community
      • value: Social Justice
      • value: Sociology
      • value: social science
      • value: gender
      • value: school
      • value: history books
      • value: historical books
      • value: gifts for history buffs
      • value: American history books
      • value: history of the united states
      • value: sociology books
      • value: history gifts
      • value: history buff gifts
      • value: history lovers gifts
      • value: history teacher gifts
creators
      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Nielsen, Kim E.
      • bioText: The author of 3 books, including two on Helen Keller and one on Anne Sullivan Macy, Kim E. Nielsen is professor of disability studies at the University of Toledo and was founding president of the Disability History Association.
      • name: Kim E. Nielsen
publishDate
2012-10-02T00:00:00-04:00
isOwnedByCollections
True
title
A Disability History of the United States
fullDescription
The first book to cover the entirety of disability history, from pre-1492 to the present
 
Disability is not just the story of someone we love or the story of whom we may become; rather it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. Covering the entirety of US history from pre-1492 to the present, A Disability History of the United States is the first book to place the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it’s a familiar telling. In other ways, however, it is a radical repositioning of US history. By doing so, the book casts new light on familiar stories, such as slavery and immigration, while breaking ground about the ties between nativism and oralism in the late nineteenth  century and the role of ableism in the development of democracy.
 
A Disability History of the United States pulls from primary-source documents and social histories to retell American history through the eyes, words, and impressions of the people who lived it. As historian and disability scholar Nielsen argues, to understand disability history isn’t to narrowly focus on a series of individual triumphs but rather to examine mass movements and pivotal daily events through the lens of varied experiences. Throughout the book, Nielsen deftly illustrates how concepts of disability have deeply shaped the American experience—from deciding who was allowed to immigrate to establishing labor laws and justifying slavery and gender discrimination. Included are absorbing—at times horrific—narratives of blinded slaves being thrown overboard and women being involuntarily sterilized, as well as triumphant accounts of disabled miners organizing strikes and disability rights activists picketing Washington.
 
Engrossing and profound, A Disability History of the United States fundamentally reinterprets how we view our nation’s past: from a stifling master narrative to a shared history that encompasses us all.
seriesId
1320394
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Rachel Simon, author of The Story of Beautiful Girl and Riding The Bus With My Sister
      • content:

        "At last: a truly inclusive history. This groundbreaking book braids together the history every American knows with the history most Americans have never even imagined--and our society has long forgotten. Fascinating, enlightening, absorbing, well-researched, and concise, A Disability History of the United States isn't just the book I wish I'd read in school. It's the book I'd encourage every American to read."

      • premium: False
      • source: Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies
      • content: "This brave book is full of surprises; a page-turner that tells a story I had not known. In every chapter there is at least one episode that made me shiver. Read it for Kim Nielsen's fresh interpretations, read it for her wisdom. U.S. history will not look the same."
      • premium: False
      • source: Susan Burch, author of Signs of Resistance
      • content: "Path-breaking, meticulously researched, and drawing on a stunning array of sources, A Disability History of the United States fundamentally changes our understanding of the nation's past. I was amazed by Kim Nielsen's ability to convey a richly peopled history while still detailing a national experience. Disability, Nielsen reminds us, is beautifully and inextricably entangled with all the other forces that shape identities and communities. This remarkable 'peoples' story' stretches the chronological, analytical, and thematic borders of U.S. and disability history. Everyone interested in U.S. and disability histories will benefit from reading this book."
      • premium: False
      • source: Michael A. Rembis, Director, Center for Disability Studies, University at Buffalo
      • content: "A wonderful, beautifully written, remarkable achievement that will certainly become a classic within the field and should become standard reading."
      • premium: False
      • source: Inside Higher Ed.
      • content: "By displacing the able-bodied, self-subsisting individual citizen as the basic unit (and implied beneficiary) of the American experience, she compels the reader to reconsider how we understand personal dignity, public life, and the common good."
      • premium: False
      • source: Booklist
      • content: "A scholarly yet stirring narrative of our nation's uneasy relations--part pity and empathy, part discrimination and social stigmatization--with disabled people."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Wilson Quarterly
      • content: "Nielsen excavates the long-buried history of physical difference in Amer­ica and shows how disability has been a significant factor in the formation of democratic values...The range of this book is marvelous."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Price County Daily
      • content: "I think you'll like this book, too, especially if you're an advocate, a student of history, or just looking for a different angle on American society. For you, A Disability History of the United States is a book you can't afford to miss."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        July 9, 2012
        This 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 of people 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 notes the 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; and the many institutions housing the disabled. Nielsen does not sidestep the thorny issue of disabled war veterans, from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War to the present, with their surging costs and advances of laws protecting the rights of the disabled and guaranteeing accessibility in civilian life. Neilsen is at her best speaking not about the physically disabled and mentally ill, but of the legal and social barricades placed against women, minorities, and immigrants, who were classified “disabled” and blocked from full citizenship.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        July 15, 2012
        American history examined sensitively and skillfully from the bottom up, grounded in the often shabby and sometimes exemplary treatment of disabled individuals. Nielsen's (History and Women's Studies/Univ. of Wisconsin, Green Bay; The Radical Lives of Helen Keller, 2004, etc.) interest in the treatment of the disabled began with research into the political activism of Helen Keller, perhaps the most famous of severely disabled Americans. The author organizes the book chronologically, beginning with the handling of disabled women and men by Native Americans. The disability spectrum within indigenous North American cultures expanded in unwelcome ways as European settlers spread disease among the Indians. Nielsen then moves on to the stories of newly arrived immigrants from Europe and Africa who were not fully functional physically or mentally. "Disability" has always been an elastic term; Nielsen explains how the definitions solidified in the legal and social sense in the 19th and 20th centuries. The definitions would deprive many individuals of full citizenship rights as institutionalization became a trend. That institutionalization fell disproportionately on the enslaved (usually but not always because of skin color), women and those individuals sometimes inaccurately characterized as lunatics or idiots. In a slightly more upbeat chapter, Nielsen explains how those marked as disabled slowly banded together to fight for their civil rights. Slowly, individuals with potential, despite being branded, began to receive educational and vocational opportunities. The final chapter marks the year 1968 as the beginning of improved understanding and enlightened policies. Individuals previously kept out of sight and mind began to enter the mainstream culture. A lively historical record that fills a gap in the literature.

        COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        October 1, 2012
        Individuals with physical, psychological, sensory, and cognitive disabilities occupy center stage in this unique perspective on American history. Nielsen, professor of history and mother of a disabled daughter, gives us a scholarly yet stirring narrative of our nation's uneasy relationspart pity and empathy, part discrimination and social stigmatizationwith disabled people. Prior to 1492, most indigenous North Americans had no word for disability. European settlement of the continent injected disability via the diseases the colonists brought as well as the conflicts, displacement, and environmental changes they wrought. Some large cities implemented ugly laws, prohibiting maimed or deformed people from appearing in public places. For a time, disabled individuals were subject to restrictive immigration policies, institutionalization, and even forced sterilization. WWII saw a surge in the employment of disabled people. The rise of activism and empowerment culminated in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. There is still much to do if all disabled persons are to achieve pride and place and live a good life in the U.S.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

popularity
35
links
    • self:
        • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/4b4090f3-e39c-412d-9b31-0af15649f0a3/metadata
        • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
id
4b4090f3-e39c-412d-9b31-0af15649f0a3
starRating
3.8
readingOrder
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0111-1/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0111-1/4B4/090/F3/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/4B4/090/F3/{4B4090F3-E39C-412D-9B31-0AF15649F0A3}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
isPublicPerformanceAllowed
False
languages
      • code: en
      • name: English
subjects
      • value: History
      • value: Sociology
      • value: Nonfiction
publishDateText
10/02/2012
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9780807022023
mediaType
eBook
shortDescription
The first book to cover the entirety of disability history, from pre-1492 to the present
 
Disability is not just the story of someone we love or the story of whom we may become; rather it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. Covering the entirety of US history from pre-1492 to the present, A Disability History of the United States is the first book to place the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it’s a familiar telling. In other ways, however, it is a radical repositioning of US history. By doing so, the book casts new light on familiar stories, such as slavery and immigration, while breaking ground about the ties between nativism and oralism in the late nineteenth  century and the role of ableism in the development of democracy.
 
A Disability History of the United States pulls from primary-source documents and social histories to retell American history...
sortTitle
Disability History of the United States
crossRefId
859114
series
ReVisioning History
publisher
Beacon Press
bisacCodes
      • code: HIS029000
      • description: History / North America
      • code: HIS036000
      • description: History / United States / General
      • code: SOC029000
      • description: Social Science / People with Disabilities