Customer Reviews

Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Medicine and Society)

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I spent a good deal of time in libraries looking for information that was ALL CONTAINED IN THIS BOOK. Trent does an amazing job of piecing together a social/medical history of mental retardation. No medical book, no first person type accounts, no histories of institutionalization touched this book. This book draws from all the different disciplines to present a complete picture (as good history books do). It is highly readable and engaging. It's academic and rigorous yet entertaining. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

James Trent has written an excellent comprehensive history of mental retardation in the U.S. Readers will also find pertinent photographs, and a full bibiography. This volume is a resource for students, human-services professionals, and historians. I highly recommend it.

I have been teaching classes on the history of residential facilities in America for several years. This book brings a new light to me, and to all of us who work for people with disabilities.

After working in this field for ten years, I finally found something that gives me a history of what has happened to those that came before me and I am making it required reading for my staff.

Generous and substantial in both scope and depth, this illuminating study offers a detailed history of mental retardation in the United States and how the condition was perceived and addressed through time. Charting the course from small 1850s schools offering individualized instruction to the large institutions of the late 19th century, this thoroughly researched book gives the reader an engrossing sociological account. As a non-academic layman interested in societal attitudes towards marginalized populations, I read it with great interest as a work of history, and also return to it from time to time as a reference. I haven't yet found a better book on this subject.

I had to read this book for a report for school. Otherwise, I would have never picked it up. It took me a long time to get through the book, because I found it to be quite technical. However, it was fascinating to find out what these people went through. It's scary to think that there actually was a comittee that was set up in 1914 with the sole purpose of irradicating the mentally retarded from this world!!