Book Review
Title: Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essay on Mass Media
Author: Beth A. Haller
Publisher: Louisville, KY, Advocado Press, PO Box 406781, www.advocadopress.org, 2010
Paper:  ISBN:  978-0-9721189-3-4
Cost:   $24.95, 208 pages
Reviewer:  Steven E. Brown

       Representing Disability in an Ableist World consists of 10 essays, most previously published elsewhere, but all updated for this excellent 2010 book. Haller, a newspaper journalist, who has become a professor of media, and a proficient blogger of media issues related to disability, approaches her subjects from a disability rights and disability studies viewpoint. While Haller clearly empathizes with the disability rights movement and is clear in her writing about her position, she is also able to provide a well-nuanced, balanced approach to each of these issues/essays.
      Many chapters are based on qualitative or quantitative content analysis as well as the authorÕs interpretation of subjects ranging from assisted suicide to movies (or more specifically movie: ÒMillion-Dollar BabyÓ) to telethons, humor and more. Several essays focus on disability in news media, including case study of autism and inclusive education. 
      In the chapter titled, ÒChanging disability terminology in the news,Ó Haller explains why language is so important to disability rights activists:     
      ÒLanguage has always had the power to define cultural groups. The words 
      used to refer to a group of people are important: they have ramifications 
      for self-perception, but they also play a large role in shaping what the
      general public believes about the groupÉ.The language in stories
      about disability, they say, helps shape what the public understands
      about the disability conditionÓ (p. 49). 
      
	In our media-based, social-networked society, understanding how disability is represented in the media is of great import and HallerÕs book would be useful in courses ranging from disability studies to journalism to history to economics (the chapter on advertising) and many more.
Steven E. Brown, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Disability Studies at the University of HawaiÔi Center on Disability Studies, an Editor of RDS, and co-founder of the Institute on Disability Culture. He may be contacted at sebrown@hawaii.edu