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A review by leonidskies
Queer Disability through History: The Queer and Disabled Movements through their Personalities by Daisy Holder
medium-paced
1.0
I received an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my review.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. I'm a queer and disabled person with training as a historian, so this looked like an absolutely ideal read for me. Instead, I would honestly say that this author has been failed in being told this book is publishable as a work of history.
The writing, in the version I received, needed serious editing, from structure to line edits. Much of the content was tenuously linked together, such that this was not a queer disability history but was mostly a history of several individuals who were queer and disabled, with frequent tangents into general queer or disabled history. The tone was entirely unacademic to the point of disparaging the work of historians that the book should have (and only occasionally was) built upon, and was otherwise sarcastic to the point of confusion. Some of the historical facts were wrong, and the historical analysis was next to nonexistent. The sources referenced were of low quality (and often formatted inconsistently), ranging from BBC news articles to podcast episodes, with barely any use of original or academic sources.
Some of the content was interesting, but that's probably the only positive point I can find. I know the author is clearly passionate about the content, but I would instead have encouraged them to do further high-quality research and work on their writing skills without trusting their work to a press that doesn't give their book the editing or cover (seriously, why is the cover a fake tweet by the author?) it deserves. This book would have been much better served by good framing as to what it actually is.
If you think you would like to read a 'popular history' (written for an audience with no academic/historical knowledge or study experience) book which gives the very basics of some queer and disabled history in the US and UK, like books written in a sarcastic tone, and have no trust for any academic historical work, then this book is genuinely for you. I like none of these things and this book was therefore not for me.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. I'm a queer and disabled person with training as a historian, so this looked like an absolutely ideal read for me. Instead, I would honestly say that this author has been failed in being told this book is publishable as a work of history.
The writing, in the version I received, needed serious editing, from structure to line edits. Much of the content was tenuously linked together, such that this was not a queer disability history but was mostly a history of several individuals who were queer and disabled, with frequent tangents into general queer or disabled history. The tone was entirely unacademic to the point of disparaging the work of historians that the book should have (and only occasionally was) built upon, and was otherwise sarcastic to the point of confusion. Some of the historical facts were wrong, and the historical analysis was next to nonexistent. The sources referenced were of low quality (and often formatted inconsistently), ranging from BBC news articles to podcast episodes, with barely any use of original or academic sources.
Some of the content was interesting, but that's probably the only positive point I can find. I know the author is clearly passionate about the content, but I would instead have encouraged them to do further high-quality research and work on their writing skills without trusting their work to a press that doesn't give their book the editing or cover (seriously, why is the cover a fake tweet by the author?) it deserves. This book would have been much better served by good framing as to what it actually is.
If you think you would like to read a 'popular history' (written for an audience with no academic/historical knowledge or study experience) book which gives the very basics of some queer and disabled history in the US and UK, like books written in a sarcastic tone, and have no trust for any academic historical work, then this book is genuinely for you. I like none of these things and this book was therefore not for me.