View the Table of Contents

Read the Introduction.

"Historians of medicine and technology will find this book an interesting introduction to a highly politicized and novel area of scholarship. This work should inspire research projects into more diverse and less categorized areas of disability."
--"Technology & Culture"

"With this work, Longmore and Umansky offer historians, sociologists and other readers intrigued by this area of scholarship an opportunity to understand disabilities as broader and more complex than a single, generic and primarily medical category."
--"Publishers Weekly"

"The essays introduce into the historical record a diverse group of people whose views and experiences have been largely excluded, challenge conventional notions of bodily integrity, and represent an important new subfield in American history from which we can expect rich and exciting innovation."
--"The Historian"

"The fifteen essays contained in it are thorough, wide-ranging and convincing in their interpretations. . . . This is a powerful contribution to the emancipatory efforts of disabled activists and one that historians should seek to encourage. For this, Longmore and Umansky's collection should be strongly commended."
--"Journal of American Studies"

"The New Disability History: American Perspectives is a truly groundbreaking volume and is well-deserving of the praise heaped on its back cover."
--"H-Net Reviews"

The essays show us that disability has a place in various parts of our history. While there is an enormous diversity of disability, the collection of essays reminds us of how comparable social perils recur across various disability groups andthroughout their particular histories."
--"Metapsychology"

Disability has always been a preoccupation of American society and culture. From antebellum debates about qualification for citizenship to current controversies over access and "reasonable accommodations," disability has been present, in penumbra if not in print, on virtually every page of American history. Yet historians have only recently begun the deep excavation necessary to retrieve lives shrouded in religious, then medical, and always deep-seated cultural, misunderstanding.

This volume opens up disability's hidden history. In these pages, a North Carolina Youth finds his identity as a deaf Southerner challenged in Civil War-era New York. Deaf community leaders ardently defend sign language in early 20th century America. The mythic Helen Keller and the long-forgotten American Blind People's higher Education and General Improvement Association each struggle to shape public and private roles for blind Americans. White and black disabled World War I and II veterans contest public policies and cultural values to claim their citizenship rights. Neurasthenic Alice James and injured turn-of-the-century railroadmen grapple with the interplay of disability and gender. Progressive-era "rehabilitationists" fashion programs to make "crippled" children economically productive and socially valid, and two Depression-era fathers murder their sons as public opinion blames the boys' mothers for having cherished the lads' lives. These and many other figures lead readers through hospital-schools, courtrooms, advocacy journals, and beyond to discover disability's past.

Coupling empirical evidence with the interdisciplinary toolsand insights of disability studies, the book explores the complex meanings of disability as identity and cultural signifier in American history.

Table of Contents

Looking back at postwar US history, it seems that a telethon accompanied every social ill, disability, disease, and natural disaster. A unique combination of entertainment and charity, this form of fundraising became a fixture in American life not long after NBC broadcast the first one, hosted by Milton Berle, in 1949. Conceived specifically for the new medium of television, the telethon-a portmanteau of "television" and "marathon"-became the fundraising vehicle of choice for the nation's leading charitable organizations. Marshaling two decades' worth of painstaking research, Telethons provides the first cultural history of the popular phenomenon. It charts the rise of the telethon as a result of five influential charities (most notably, the Muscular Dystrophy Association) and profiles the key figures-philanthropists, politicians, celebrities, corporate sponsors, and recipients-involved. The book also serves as a chronicle of disabilty history in the postwar US, as Longmore shows the changing depiction of the disabled-from objects of pity in the Fifties and Sixties to figures of empowerment in the late twentieth century. A significant portion of the book analyzes the various clashes between telethon-producing charities and activists in the disability rights movement that have become increasingly frequent since the 1970s. Throughout, Telethons explores familiar staples of the genre such as "poster children," the comedic emcee, and the concept of "conspicuous contribution."

View the Table of Contents

Read the Introduction.

"Historians of medicine and technology will find this book an interesting introduction to a highly politicized and novel area of scholarship. This work should inspire research projects into more diverse and less categorized areas of disability."
--"Technology & Culture"

"With this work, Longmore and Umansky offer historians, sociologists and other readers intrigued by this area of scholarship an opportunity to understand disabilities as broader and more complex than a single, generic and primarily medical category."
--"Publishers Weekly"

"The essays introduce into the historical record a diverse group of people whose views and experiences have been largely excluded, challenge conventional notions of bodily integrity, and represent an important new subfield in American history from which we can expect rich and exciting innovation."
--"The Historian"

"The fifteen essays contained in it are thorough, wide-ranging and convincing in their interpretations. . . . This is a powerful contribution to the emancipatory efforts of disabled activists and one that historians should seek to encourage. For this, Longmore and Umansky's collection should be strongly commended."
--"Journal of American Studies"

"The New Disability History: American Perspectives is a truly groundbreaking volume and is well-deserving of the praise heaped on its back cover."
--"H-Net Reviews"

The essays show us that disability has a place in various parts of our history. While there is an enormous diversity of disability, the collection of essays reminds us of how comparable social perils recur across various disability groups andthroughout their particular histories."
--"Metapsychology"

Disability has always been a preoccupation of American society and culture. From antebellum debates about qualification for citizenship to current controversies over access and "reasonable accommodations," disability has been present, in penumbra if not in print, on virtually every page of American history. Yet historians have only recently begun the deep excavation necessary to retrieve lives shrouded in religious, then medical, and always deep-seated cultural, misunderstanding.

This volume opens up disability's hidden history. In these pages, a North Carolina Youth finds his identity as a deaf Southerner challenged in Civil War-era New York. Deaf community leaders ardently defend sign language in early 20th century America. The mythic Helen Keller and the long-forgotten American Blind People's higher Education and General Improvement Association each struggle to shape public and private roles for blind Americans. White and black disabled World War I and II veterans contest public policies and cultural values to claim their citizenship rights. Neurasthenic Alice James and injured turn-of-the-century railroadmen grapple with the interplay of disability and gender. Progressive-era "rehabilitationists" fashion programs to make "crippled" children economically productive and socially valid, and two Depression-era fathers murder their sons as public opinion blames the boys' mothers for having cherished the lads' lives. These and many other figures lead readers through hospital-schools, courtrooms, advocacy journals, and beyond to discover disability's past.

Coupling empirical evidence with the interdisciplinary toolsand insights of disability studies, the book explores the complex meanings of disability as identity and cultural signifier in American history.

Table of Contents

BY TRACING George Washington's deliberate development from colonial planter and soldier to republican icon, Paul Longmore answers the riddle of Washington's simultaneous fame and aloofness, arriving at a portrait of Washington as a self-fashioning representative of his turbulent time. As a young Virginia planter, Washington aspired to virtues associated with the colonial gentry, but as the British system of patronage threatened his own ambitions, he adopted the radical Whig patriotism that would lead him to take up arms. As a national hero of the Revolutionary War, and in accepting the presidency, Washington defended civilian control of the military and other ideals of republican government because his own image was inextricably tied to their success. The Invention of George Washington, first published in hardcover in 1988, explores the character of our first president in modern terms, but as Longmore shows, Washington's assiduous cultivation of his own public image does not ultimately diminish his extraordinary achievements as general and statesman.