Chemers' book makes a significant contribution to disability studies, theatre studies, and freak studies. Many studies of the freak have become "one of us" to a greater or lesser extent: there have been histories of the freak show that either condemn it as exploitative or romanticize its difference; there have been disability studies critiques of the freak show that debate the freak show's potential as an activist site. Chemers shows his familiarity with these, but is also clear about what this study can contribute; as he writes, "[it] is a history of freak shows unlike any other in that it provides detailed analysis critical not only of the freak show but also of the forces that shaped and recorded the show's history" (3). His, then, is a particular kind of historiography, conducted through his overview of benchmark moments in freak history which he posits are representative of a more holistic discussion of the potential for the subversion of the normate operant in the freak show. The importance of the cross-disciplinary nature of Chemers' critique becomes evident not only for how it mediates and builds on debates about the freak show, however, but for how it reveals an interpretation of freakery that has, ironically, hidden in plain sight; as he observes,

[the] freak show, like all forms of theatrical performance, adapts to such changes [in cultural values, scientific knowledge, social beliefs about disability, and aesthetics]….Freaks, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly, render the invisible visible and force us to examine our own thought processes about disability and other forms of stigma in a way that provides a progressive vision for the future, one in which disability might no longer be stigmatized at all but accepted universally as an everyday component of the human condition. (5)

The tone of the book throughout is energized, engaging, and even somewhat performative; we're being drawn in as latter-day spectators to envision what Chemers wants us to see. This literally begins on page one, as Chemers brings us along with him to Coney Island to witness a performance of one of the last modern-day freak shows. The image of Chemers attending a freak show is an intriguing way to begin the book, yet also one that's highly relevant: we're compelled to ask, as with all of the moments he details in the book, what are we doing here? And, in turn, what is freakery doing here, in this moment? The reader new to freak studies, disability studies, or theater studies will be able to access the book's arguments, as the early part of Chemers' book sets out to describe the theoretical apparatus used to answer these questions. In it, he gives an overview of the history of the rise of the freak, details Goffman's theories of stigma, discusses disability as a performance, and places theatre studies' and disability studies' respective treatments of the freak in dialogue with one another, positing that the

freak show, then, is not an accidental symptom of a general tendency to marginalize persons with disabilities, by a strategic, even premeditated, process of stigma management. Often (but not always) mercenary and exploitative, freak shows nevertheless represent successful attempts by disabled people (and other stigmatized individuals) to gain control of the process of stigmatization. (Chemers 19)

To understand this, argues Chemers, is to "rehabilitate the history of a performance tradition with tremendous transgressive and liberating potential," although a strength of the study is that he never turns this into a simple progressivist narrative (25).

Instead, what emerges from Chemers' ensuing discussions within each of the chapters is a fascinating range of "freak reads": freaks can be seen as situated in complex, and admittedly sometimes complicit, ways. These include, in Chapter Two ("Prurience and Propriety") for example, an examination of the relationship between the history of performer Charles Stratton ("General Tom Thumb") and his critics, then as now; in it, Chemers encourages us not to replicate the moves made by elitist thinkers of Stratton's day. In exploring Stratton's appeal, he helps us understand how the subversive potential of Stratton's performances might assist our reimagining the very categories of nineteenth-century performance—and by extension, the place of the disabled body in that society. In Chapter Three ("Enlightenment and Wonder"), Chemers considers the cultural moment where Darwin's theories of the origin of the species and freakery intersect, exploring how the latter became, paradoxically, part of a movement to democratize American social interactions, lift the stigmatized body to eminence, and yet simultaneously provide justification for American imperialist aims. Chapter Four ("Pathology and Prodigy") interrogates the assumption that the freak show simply went into a decline because of the rise of medical discourse and concomitant human "enlightenment." Indeed, the freak show becomes a key part, as Chemers points out, of "the medicalization of all human difference," and "[unwitting] ammunition" in that process as American eugenics looms large (91). And yet, the example of "The Revolt of the Freaks," the 1899 insistence of Barnum and Bailey sideshow performers that they be called not "freaks" but "prodigies," represents an important attempt to "[hijack] the medicalization of human difference and [make] people with disabilities the victors, not the victims, of Darwinian evolution" (Chemers 99-100). Finally, in Chapter Five ("Exploitation and Transgression"), Chemers explores what is at stake in the dismissal of freakery for different reasons through examining contemporary debates over "freak studies." In situating his own argument for the decline of the freak show in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and in recounting other moments in which the freak show has come under contemporary attack, Chemers continues the larger project of his book: rather than weighing the "goodness" or "badness" of individual examples of freakery, he argues, one must engage its myriad manifestations on their own terms to best interrogate the ethics of freakery, the agency of disabled people, and the very real historical and economic conditions of performance.

This is a well-researched, well-argued study that moves with ease across social history, disability and theatre history, and disability theory. Built on engaging, wide-ranging, and well-chosen evidence, its readability, energy, and engaging tone makes it an accessible and historically useful text for undergraduates; the fact that its organizing question is an attempt to move theater and disability studies discourse forward likewise make it valuable to scholars in those fields. In the end, Chemers neither romanticizes the freak show, nor denies the difficulties and contradictions inherent in the disability scholar/activist attempting to conduct a study of the same. His is not the last word on the debates over the ethics and implications of freak studies, but rather, as he puts it, a study that "draws out the disabling, enfreaking gaze but does so in order to critique it and closely examine its mechanisms" (134). That those mechanisms have a persistent and nuanced presence in American social and cultural history must, in Chemers' view, be harnessed as a force for resisting the containment and quantification of bodies. Or in other words, "[We] are attracted to freak shows because they are discourses not only of deviance but of getting away with deviance" (Chemers 137). This might explain our continued attraction to the freakish elements of reality television, "medical" documentaries on extraordinary bodies, and bodies that perform personal and prosthetic excess from the Octomom to Lady Gaga. Such an attraction, coupled with activist insights and critical discourse of the kind conducted here, might well lead to the kind of "freaktopia" Chemers imagines at book's end.