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The history of public health has been a flourishing field in the last three decades. Yet despite a spate of excellent monographs about various epidemic diseases and many good collections about health and disease in Africa, Asia, The Middle East, Latin America, as well as Europe and North America, the most recent textbook on the history of public health is four decades old.

The last decade has witnessed a flowering of interest in the history of women and cancer, alongside studies on the history of cancer and related topics.(1) While there might be historical trends that explain the attention paid to certain topics in medical history at particular times, the literature on the history of cancer deals with an inherently controversial disease

This book is a welcome addition to the growing field of literature on the history of eugenics. It brings that discussion into the field of disability studies as it deconstructs how and why concerns over feeblemindedness lay at the heart of eugenics ideology.

In 1919, Douglas C. McMurtrie, Director of the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, remarked that, ‘beyond reaches of history, the disabled man has been a castaway of society’.

Alcohol policy never ceases to be controversial.

From a comparative perspective the health system of the United States has a history that is both representative and idiosyncratic.

William Rosen never had the opportunity to have a signing for his new book that was just released this past May 2017. He never got to do a book tour for Viking, take questions at the end of a talk about source material, or see it for sale on Amazon.

The history of eugenics continues to provide new and challenging ways to interpret the some of the major developments in social policy and social work during the 20th century, from child welfare, public health, and family planning, to the institutionalisation of disabled persons and the treatment of mentally ill.