Review of Poore, Carol. Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007

In Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture, Carol Poore offers numerous insights into the social, political, economic, and scientific processes that produce the tremendous range of disability definitions—and treatments—of disabled people.Germany in the twentieth century presents a bountiful case for studying the consequences of different cultural representations and social understandings of human variations in embodiment. Yet this book not only spans Germany’s at times terrifying, at times liberating, twentieth century but also reaches beyond its title to creatively compare disability representations, scholarship, and social forces in the German-speaking countries and the United States. Building on decades of transatlantic scholarship and personal experiences, Poore is uniquely placed to guide us on a journey from the boundaries drawn around disability in the arts and state policies of the Weimar Republic to the eugenic nadir of Nazi Germany and to on-going struggles—and increasing victories—of people with disabilities for civil rights,self-determination, and social inclusion in both the United States and Germany.