Among the topics she covers are: current and historical debates on the quality of disabled peoples lives; the way disability is represented within Western culture; institutionalization and independence; feminist research and community care; and the politics of the disability movement. She asserts that, for too long, non-disabled people have not only defined the experience of disability but have had control over disabled peoples lives. This important book has grown out of an emerging organization of disabled people who are part of a powerful new culture. Jenny Morris is the author of Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability, Able Lives: Womens Experience of Paralysis, and Alone Together: Voices of Single Mothers.

    It gives us renewed hope, by locating the "problem of pain" in a profoundly theological framework, in which ultimate resolution of the mystery of illness and suffering is provided by the healing touch of Christ Himself, the Physician of our souls and bodies. John Breck, from the Foreword Jean-Claude Larchet's The Theology of Illness, already translated into several languages, now appears in English and explores biblical and patristic perspectives on sickness and redemptive suffering. The questions Larchet considers are fundamental: the origins of sin in a fallen world, its impact on physical health, and the healing of human nature by the incarnate Son of God. He explains healing as a means of glorifying God, stressing again the crucial role of prayer and sacramental grace in promoting genuine health. When illness plunges us into unfamiliar territory, even to the point of death, Larchet teaches us to marshal spiritual reserves in a society dominated by technology and materialism. In a time when the physician has been dubbed the high priest of the god of Modern Medicine, Larchet encourages us to situate these crucial experiences within the framework of their relationship to the unique reality of the Holy Trinity.