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James W. Trent uses public documents, private letters, investigative reports, and rare photographs to explore our changing perceptions of mental retardation over the past 150 years. He contends that the economic vulnerability of mentally retarded people (and their families), more than the claims made for their intellectual or social limitations, has determined their institutional treatment.

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Those with lower than "normal" intelligence have been labeled and discriminated against for most of American history. As society became more technologically oriented and complex, the ability of these people to function appropriately was increasingly called into question and ways were developed to care for and control them. The first model, which focused on education, was replaced in the 1870s by one emphasizing custodial care. After expos'es recording conditions not unlike those of the Nazi concentration camps, the third phase, deinstitutionalization, began in the 1960s. Trent's history covers the period from the mid-19th century to the New Deal most adequately; his analysis of post-WW II developments is sketchy. He treats the major personalities--Isaac Kerlin, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Henry H. Goddard, and Wolf Wolfensberger--well, although he seems to focus too heavily on just a few institutions. Finally, he writes dispassionately until a few paragraphs near the conclusion, when he gives the reader a sense of his own involvement. Compare with R.C. Scheerenberger's A History of Mental Retardation (CH, May'83). Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. R. Jamieson; Ashland University

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James W. Trent, Jr. is Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Work at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.