Local author Alex Green’s biography of Walter E. Fernald longlisted by National Book Critics Circle

The National Book Critics Circle has named Waltham author Alex Green’s book, “A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled,” to the 2025 NBCC Awards Longlist: Biography. 

The awards are prestigious with titles chosen by professional book critics as among the outstanding works from hundreds of biographies published this year. The NBCC will announce the finalists in January. 

The Waltham Times article on the book, “A Perfect Turmoil”: Uncovering the life of Walter Fernald, noted that Fernald’s name is now synonymous with abuse scandals that took place at the Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center decades after his death. This dark chapter of the school’s history has overshadowed Fernald’s work as one of the foremost experts on disability and disability care in the world. 

“From defining disability and setting international standards for institutionalization to playing a role in the rise of the eugenics movement, Fernald changed the world as we know it. But the story of the man himself has largely been omitted from the history books,” the article noted. 

This is the omission that Green’s book strives to correct. 

“The Fernald School left behind a haunting legacy for our city and yet its entire story was wrapped up in myths that were largely untrue while any chance of understanding it was being erased. Nowhere was that more glaring than the fact that we all say the name Walter Fernald but nobody knew who he was,” Green wrote in an email to The Waltham Times. “I felt that survivors of the institution, families of people buried under anonymous gravestones in the woods of North Waltham, former employees who are still shaken by the abuses they witnessed, and kids who are growing up attending special education classes that were created by Walter Fernald in the first place all deserved to know the true story of who this man was, how he shaped our lives and how he continues to do so today.” 

By longlisting the book, the NBCC recognized it has implications far beyond Waltham, as the institution was “the model for hundreds of other institutions around the country and the world,” Green said. 

The country is in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past, Green believes. He cited the proposal for “wellness farms” and the loss of funding for special education and home- and community-based care as policies that will lead to more people, many of them disabled, becoming homeless and institutionalized. President Trump’s July 24, 2025, executive order made this explicit: “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.”

“[Fernald’s] story, from building that system to insisting that it should be torn down, is one that is deeply relevant to all Americans at a time when disabled people face a world that is keen to rebuild the horror of institutions all over again,” Green added.