"In this erudite, sensitive, witty, and impeccably-documented book Zina Weygand draws from the rich tradition of the French Annales school, while also offering something completely new. Thanks to her energy and creativity as a researcher, we meet scores of people who might otherwise be "victims of the vagaries of existence," from the first troupe of blind actors to the "individualist, dirty, noisy, and quarrelsome" residents of the Quinze-Vingts hospice.... Weygand's in-depth study of the reciprocal relationship between the social treatment and representations of blind people from the Middle Ages to the middle of the nineteenth century invites readers to reconsider the ocularcentric roots of modernity." —From the foreword by Catherine Kudlick, University of California, Davis "Until recently, historical studies of disability [...] have had difficulty finding their bearings [] Zina Weygand's work on the blind [...] is new evidence of the vitality of historical research in little known and insufficiently explored domains." —Le Monde Initiatives "I must first of all underscore the contribution Zina Weygand has made to the history of the longue durée that is still sorely lacking in disability studies. The history of the disabled and of disabilities is barely twenty years old. It still has almost no place in universities. It has been introduced by pioneers who have had recourse to history, in response to practices and social policies they find questionable [...]" —Esprit