Snappy new book this was, an almost completely unreadable unless you are interested, not only in disability history, but also the semiotics of disability and the whole concept of “otherness” and people relentlessly talking about it. While I am interested to learn more about Helen Keller and her Socialism and politics in particular, I don’t really want to hear about Helen Keller reinterpreted accoding to modern-day mores and ideas about the place of the disabled in society as it appears to us today. While this book has many fine essays that cover historical issues in disability studies, overall it is plodding and weighted down with too much pomo theory which seems to me to be as potentially disrespectful to the disabled as the discrimination the essays describe.