The first book to cover the entirety of disability history, from pre-1492 to the present
Disability is not only 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 disabled people at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it’s a familiar telling. In other ways, 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 US 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.
A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen is the reason I created the Backlist series. Even though the book is over a decade old, it offers important lessons about our present historical moment. A Disability History of the United States is a groundbreaking history of the United States told through the lens of disability. Sweeping in scope—from before 1492 to the present—this brief introduction to disability history offers readers a solid foundation on which to build their knowledge. Nielsen tells the stories of disabled people through deep research in primary sources with a historian’s eye for trends.
Scholars will appreciate Nielsen’s structural approach to institutions and movements. Nielsen shows how disabled people built communities even in the harshest systems, founded social movements that shaped our history, and often led the movements that won many of us our rights today.
Part of the essential ReVisioning History series from Beacon Press, A Disability History of the United States is a must-read for every American.
In 2012, A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen became the first survey of American history to consider disability as a framework for understanding the American experience—not just as an afterthought. Alice Wong says it best on the cover blurb: “Required reading…Nielsen places disabled people where they have always been: front and center in the story of America. Surprisingly revelatory and refreshing.”
The disability history that Nielsen covers in a mere 240 pages is breathtaking. She rightly begins with indigenous views of disability pre-1492 before moving on to the colonial period. The book ends with the modern disability rights movement from 1968 to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. If you know me, you know I don’t say this lightly: this book needed to be longer. Like many books that are the first to do a particular thing, this book is ambitious in its scope. Nielsen paints the history of disability in the United States with broad strokes. At times, however, the strokes are so broad that the reader gets only an impression of the period before having to move onto the next one.
This disability history tells the story of structures, institutions, and movements. Each chapter covers a different historical period, and Nielsen provides an essential thematic framework for understanding each one. Although she shares individual disabled experiences, Nielsen’s social history focuses primarily on long-term trends. So while disabled people are at the center of the American story, sometimes the storytelling falters.
To write this review, I reread chapter 6, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” The Progressive Era, 1890 to 1927. That chapter takes us through the history of eugenics in the United States and the deeper institutionalization of disabled people.
This chapter begins with the words that describe disability during that period—many of which are considered slurs today. Nielsen is sensitive to that and prepares the reader for their use in primary sources. That doesn’t make the reading any easier. This chapter might have been the hardest to process because there is so much trauma. That trauma intersects disability, race, class, gender, and sexuality. I appreciated her approach to the story of Alice Smith. And yet, I found it odd that the 1918 flu pandemic didn’t make it into the narrative. I realize that reading this after 2020 means I have a very different view of pandemics than Nielsen had in 2012. But the 1918 flu pandemic has always been a major moment in American political and social history. Its absence is deeply felt.
The history of eugenics Nielsen begins in chapter 6 does not continue beyond that chapter. The causal reader might get the impression that eugenics began and ended in the Progressive Era. And while I don’t think Nielson would argue that at all, it’s another moment where it feels like there was a missed opportunity to carry that conversation into the present. It’s that connective tissue that I wanted more of.
This book is part of the ReVisioning History series from Beacon Press. It’s a powerful list and essential reading in this historical moment. I count Asian American Histories of the United States by
Catherine Ceniza Choy among my best reads of 2023.
In whatever way is most accessible to you. I would love Beacon Press to publish a graphic novel and a YA version.