CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Alex Green, an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, has won the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography for A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America's Disabled (Bellevue Literary Press). The National Book Critics Circle Award is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States, recognizing outstanding books in six categories each year as selected by a jury of professional critics.
A Perfect Turmoil tells the story of Dr. Walter E. Fernald, who in 1887 became superintendent of the nation's oldest public school for intellectually and developmentally disabled children and went on to reshape how America understood and treated disability. Drawing on a decade of research and extensive unexamined archives, Green traces how Fernald pioneered special education in America and developed innovative medical treatments for disabled people — before descending into the eugenics movement and ultimately emerging as a leading opponent of mass institutionalization.
“America’s disability history has powerful lessons for us in the present day, but it is largely unexplored. Bringing one of its most important, overlooked, and complicated figures to light has been an all-consuming effort and to have that work recognized in this way means more than I can possibly say,” Green said.
Initially blocked from accessing Fernald’s records, Green’s research exposed highly restrictive state laws and the mishandling of thousands of medical and educational records from 25 state institutions like the Fernald School. Through his efforts, a coalition of more than two dozen disability rights groups have successfully led a yearslong legislative push that has reversed many of those policies. In November, his work resulted in the unsealing of more than 10 million historical records to survivors, descendants, scholars, and the public.
Green, who was awarded the Kennedy School's Manuel C. Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2021–22, teaches op-ed writing and writing for politics and policy at HKS. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the author of landmark Massachusetts legislation creating a disability-led human rights commission to investigate the history of state institutions for disabled people. A Perfect Turmoil is his first book.