"Joe and Rose Kennedy's strikingly beautiful daughter Rosemary attended exclusive schools, was presented as a debutante to the queen of England, and traveled the world with her high-spirited sisters. Yet Rosemary was intellectually disabled, a secret fiercely guarded by her powerful and glamorous family. In [this book, the author], Kate Clifford Larson uses newly uncovered sources to bring Rosemary Kennedy's story to light. Young Rosemary comes alive...

"Rosemary (Rosie) Kennedy was born in 1918, the first daughter of a wealthy Bostonian couple who later would become known as the patriarch and matriarch of America's most famous and celebrated family. Elizabeth Koehler was born in 1957, the first and only child of a struggling Wisconsin farm family. What, besides their religion, did these two very different Catholic women have in common? One person: Stella Koehler, a charismatic woman of the cloth...

Pennhurst is a story of segregation, abandonment, and the meaning of home as told by the people that lived in, worked at, and crusaded for one of the largest and oldest intellectual and developmental disability institution in the United States. The facility, in its closing, challenged society's perception of those with intellectual disabilities and ultimately fought for equal rights, rights that are still being fought today.

"American history is full of examples of discrimination in all forms, but never before has the wreckage from America's infatuation with eugenics and its state-sanctioned policy of hate toward the mentally ill been put in such personal terms. In this extraordinary debut book, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Erickson answers the questions that have long haunted an immigrant family: Why was a mother in her early twenties imprisoned and then sterilized?...