A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled

Name: A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled
Author: Alex Green
ISBN: 9781954276437

Alex Green

award won

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Alex Green

award won

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#338 of 3,809 books · #148 in Biography & Memoir

Won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography (2025).

A Perfect Turmoil won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The rise, fall, and redemption of the doctor behind America's first public school for mentally disabled people From the moment he became superintendent of the nation's oldest public school for intellectually and developmentally disabled children in 1887 until his death in 1924, Dr. Walter E. Fernald led a wholesale transformation of our understanding of disabilities in ways that continue to influence our views today. How did the man who designed the first special education class in America, shaped the laws of entire nations, and developed innovative medical treatments for the disabled slip from idealism into the throes of eugenics before emerging as an opponent of mass institutionalization? Based on a decade of research, A Perfect Turmoil is the story of a doctor, educator, and policymaker who was unafraid to reverse course when convinced by the evidence, even if it meant going up against some of the most powerful forces of his time. In this landmark work, Alex Green has drawn upon extensive, unexamined archives to unearth the hidden story of one of America's largely forgotten, but most complex, conflicted, and significant figures.

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