Slouch

""A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"" ""A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of the Year"" ""A long history of anxiety about the proximity between human and bestial nature. . . . Linker traces the history of this concern: from the exchanges of nineteenth-century scientists, who first identified the possible ancestral causes of contemporary back pain, to the late-twentieth-century popularity of the Alexander Technique, Pilates, and hatha yoga. . . . She sees the ‘past and present worries concerning posture’ . . . [are] grounded in a mythology of human ancestry that posits the hunter-gatherer as an ideal from which we have fallen.""---Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker ""Astonishing.""---Daniel Felsenthal, New Republic ""Well-researched.""---Belinda Lanks, Wall Street Journal ""Slouch is a skillfully researched, engrossing account of a socially engineered epidemic that captured the public imagination for the better part of a century."" * Shelf Awareness ​​​​​​​ * ""Linker expertly conveys just how embedded posture science once was — and how quickly it was forgotten.""---Isabel Berwick, Financial Times  ""Compelling. . . . [a] fascinating study.""---Anna Katharina Schaffner, Times Literary Supplement ""An engaging book on the science of posture. . . . [Linker] provides a sophisticated critique of identifying postural problems as an ‘epidemic,’ which engages modes of surveillance and control, often internalized by each generation. . . . Highly recommended."" * Choice Reviews * ""[Slouch] offers insight into how persistent postural ableism harms disabled communities today and why posture continues to captivate modern research and retail. . . . Essential reading for all students and professionals whose work concerns bodies and health inequity.""---Rajiv M. Sastry, Disability & Society ""A useful addition to the larger scholarship on the social, cultural, and political implications of bodily standards. . . . [Slouch] reveals the normalization and standardization of bodily comportment that was central to the posture sciences from its origins to the present and interrogates the ableism and racism at its core.""---Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Technology & Culture ""Fascinating.""---Tim Horder, Oxford Magazine ""Deeply researched and engagingly written. . . . This book is a must-read for scholars in the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century science, medicine, and disability.""---Andrew J. Hogan, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences