Before Disability is a literary, legal, and cultural history of disability, race, and citizenship between the Revolution and the Civil War. It shows how disability helped to shape US citizenship as it developed as well as how the formation of US citizenship, in turn, fundamentally shaped disability.

Drawing from extensive archival research, Out of the Horrors of War demonstrates that disabled citizens in the World War II era organized a national movement for economic security and full citizenship, reshaping the U.S. welfare state and laying the foundation for the disability rights movement.