Disability Science

From one of the nation's most dedicated advocates for those with disabilities, an exposé of the insidious takeover of disability supports by private equity firms and a clarion call for urgent systemic change in a broken industry that has mistreated millions.

With Mental Health, Inc., award-winning investigative journalist Art Levine delivers a Shock Doctrine-style exposé of the failures of our out-of-control, profits-driven mental health system, with a special emphasis on the failures of the pharmaceuticals industry, including the treatment of children with antipsychotics and disastrous PTSD protocols for veterans.

What would it be like to see everyone as a friend? Twelve-year-old Eli D'Angelo has a genetic disorder that obliterates social inhibitions, making him irrepressibly friendly, indiscriminately trusting, and unconditionally loving toward everyone he meets. It also makes him enormously vulnerable. Eli lacks the innate skepticism that will help his peers navigate adolescence more safely - and vastly more successfully.

A 16 ans, Jacques Sémelin apprend qu'il va devenir aveugle. Pendant des années, il garde ce secret pour lui et affronte seul l'angoisse et la progression de la cécité.

Conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker have fascinated the world since the 19th century. In her captivating book, Chang and Eng Reconnected, Cynthia Wu traces the "Original Siamese Twins" through the terrain of American culture, showing how their inseparability underscored tensions between individuality and collectivity in the American popular imagination.

Connected at the chest by a band of flesh, Chang and Eng Bunker toured the United States and the world from the 1820s to the 1870s, placing themselves and their extraordinary bodies on exhibit as "freaks of nature". More famously known as the Siamese twins, they eventually settled in rural North Carolina, married two white sisters, became slave owners, and fathered 21 children between them. More than a biography of the twins, this is a study of 19th-century American culture and society that reveals how Americans projected onto the twins their own hopes and fears.

While "freaks" have captivated our imagination since well before the 19th century, the Victorians flocked to shows featuring dancing dwarves, bearded ladies, "missing links", and six-legged sheep. Indeed, this period has been described by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson as the epoch of "consolidation" for freakery: an era of social change, enormously popular freak shows, and taxonomic frenzy. Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in Britain, edited by Marlene Tromp, turns to that rich nexus, examining the struggle over definitions of "freakery".

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent 76 years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including 6 in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and Black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life.

In a series of beautifully textured stories, the author takes the listener on a fascinating journey as she travels with Teela, her lively "golden dog", through airports, city streets, and southwest desert landscapes, exploring these surroundings with changed sight. This unusual account of travel will inspire the sighted as well as the blind, offering pointed observations on processes of learning to work with a service animal and on coming to terms with a disability.

Natalie O'Rourke was an ordinary little girl from Birmingham in all respects save one: she was lonely. When she discovered how much she loved horses, she decided she wanted to grow up and run a riding stables. She wanted her stables to cater for children and adults with disabilities, additional needs and anyone who needed a friend—people who you might not expect to find riding, but who she knew could find happiness through horses, because she had.

In this fascinating historical adventure, broadcaster and author Selina Mills takes us on a journey through the history of blindness in Western Culture to discover that blindness is not so dark after all. Inspired by her own experience of losing her sight as she forged a successful journalistic career, Life Unseen takes us through a personal and unsentimental historical quest through the lives, stories and achievements of blind people—as well as those sighted people who sought to patronize, demonize and fix them.

An inclusive and empowering manifesto for change in women’s healthcare – exploring the systemic and deep rooted sexism within medicine, and offering actionable ways for women to advocate for ourselves and others and get the diagnosis and treatment we need. Have you ever been to a doctor and felt like you were being fobbed off or ignored? Did they belittle or overlook your concerns about your health? Ever been told you’re just ‘hormonal’? You’re not alone.

For more than 40 years, professionals in the field of disability studies have engaged in debates over the use of aversive interventions (such as electric shock) like the ones used at the Judge Rotenberg Center. This book is a historical case study of the Judge Rotenberg Center, named after the judge who ruled in favor of keeping its doors open to use aversive interventions.

David Aguilar was born missing part of one arm, a small detail that seemed to define his life and limit people’s ideas of who he was and who he could be. But in this funny and heartfelt memoir, David proves that he can throw out the rulebook and people’s expectations and maybe even make a difference in the world—and all with a sense of humor.

One million cloned soldiers. A nation imprisoned. A group of neurodiverse rebels fighting back. Britain as we know it lies destroyed. In the aftermath of the most daring military coup in history, the surviving population is crammed inside giant citadels, watched over by an army of cloned soldiers. The hope of a nation lies in a tiny number of freedom fighters hidden in the abandoned countryside, most of whom are teenagers who escaped the attack on their special school.

We treat the body as an afterthought, until it no longer can be. Until the pain or the pleasure is too great. Sinéad Gleeson's life has been marked by terrible illness, including leukemia and debilitating arthritis. As a child, she bathed in the springs of Lourdes, ever hopeful that her body would cooperate, ever looking forward to the day when she could take her body for granted. But just as she turns inward to explore her own pain, and then the marvel of recovery, and then the arrival of her greatest joys—falling in love, becoming a mother—she turns her gaze outward.

In this deeply moving memoir, Dr. Bhaskar Bora recounts his life-changing journey through a spinal cord injury and a battle with cancer. I Died Standing Still is a raw and powerful story of resilience, courage, and transformation. More than a personal narrative, it is a testament to the human spirit’s ability to rise from adversity and find meaning, creativity, and hope in the darkest times.

Things That Are continues the story of Bobby Phillips - the boy who woke up one day to find himself invisible - and his friend and confidante, a blind girl named Alicia. Bobby is returning from college visits in New York, and Alicia has decided to finally confront him about her feelings. But a mysterious character with an affliction similar to Bobby's and some surprise visits from the FBI threaten to destroy everything.

How I Became a Human Being is Mark O'Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O'Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O'Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

Jamey Barlowe has been crippled since childhood, the result of being born on the Moon. He lives his life in a wheelchair, only truly free when he is in the water. But then Jamey’s father sends him, along with five other kids, back to the Moon to escape a political coup d’etat that has occurred overnight in the United States. Moreover, one of the other five refugees is more than she appears. Their destination is the mining colony, Apollo. Jamey will have to learn a whole new way to live, one that entails walking for the first time in his life.