Books

The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality 
(University of Minnesota Press, 2022)

The Disability Bioethics Reader
w/ Christine Wieseler
(Routledge, 2022; 2nd Edition: 2027)

Disability Justice in Public Health Emergencies
w/ Mercer Gary
(Routledge, 2024)

The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability
w/ Liz Bowen, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Erik Parens
(Oxford University Press, 2025)

The Meaning of Disability 
(Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2026)

Philosophy of Disability: An Introduction 
(Polity, forthcoming 2027)
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The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability


Out NOW! from Oxford University Press

Disabled people are experts in innovation and adaptation, experts in building networks of support and knowledge sharing, and experts in navigating a world that is not built for them. This expertise is not a niche form of knowledge, but one that speaks to a fundamental question about how we should live together—and even thrive together—amid the vast landscape of human difference. In pieces discussing everything from moving with guide dogs to hiking on wheels to nurturing chosen family, The Art of Flourishing offers a window into the innumerable and varied ways scholars, artists, writers, and thought leaders with disabilities understand what it means to “flourish.”

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Disability Justice in Public Health Emergencies

Book cover of "Disability Justice in Public Health Emergencies, edited by Joel Michael Reynolds and Mercer E. Gary." The text is in black and white above a picture of a storm system over a forest. It's not clear if the storm is coming or going, but light is breaking through suggesting a change in one direction or another. A band of solid red appears at the top and bottom of the book cover creating a strong contrast with the black, white, and dark gray of the rest of the cover.


Released in 2024 from Routledge

Disability Justice in Public Health Emergencies is the first book to highlight contributions from critical disability scholarship to the fields of public health ethics and disaster ethics. It takes up such contributions with the aim of charting a path forward for clinicians, bioethicists, public health experts, and anyone involved in emergency planning to better care for disabled people—and thereby for all people—in the future. It is designed with the diverse needs of educators across fields and specialties, whether one is teaching in a college classroom, medical or law school, or as part of continuing professional education.

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The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain and Morality

A picture of Schnerp, the most adorable miniature dachshund in the world, sitting on a couch with his hand on the book "The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality by Joel Michael Reynolds." Schnerp is a short-haired brownish-red puppy with gray hairs on his snout showing his age. The rest of the image involves bright blues matching the blue of the book cover.


Released in 2022 from The University of Minnesota Press

More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said: “let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” This idea is alive and well today. During the past century, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that the United States can forcibly sterilize intellectually disabled women and philosopher Peter Singer argued for the right of parents to euthanize certain cognitively disabled infants. The Life Worth Living explores how and why such arguments persist by investigating the exclusion of and discrimination against disabled people across the history of Western moral philosophy.

Praise for The Life Worth Living:

“The Life Worth Living…is a book that is indispensable to anyone with a philosophical interest in disability.”
—Eva Feder Kittay, Stony Brook University

“…cements his reputation as a trailblazer in the new field of ‘disability bioethics’ and establishes The Life Worth Living as essential reading in the genre.”
—Amber Knight, UNC Charlotte

“A work of remarkable breadth, beauty, and clarity.”
—Licia Carlson, Providence College

“…the most insightful analysis of pain since Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain. His phenomenology of foreboding, beholdenness, bioreckoning, and disruption is brilliant.”
—Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University

“Reynolds asserts the incredible worth of disabled lives as well as of the ‘worlds disability creates’ in societies that alienate disabled people, necessitating the creation of such worlds. Reynolds carefully builds his arguments without overusing philosophical terminology or opaque sentences, making each stage easy to follow and build on as each chapter progresses.”
—CHOICE

“An important contribution to the growing field of philosophy of disability.”
—Jane Dryden, Mount Allison University

“Scrupulously precise and systematic in its account of the prejudices against disability that have dominated not just general public opinion over human history, but have, according to Reynolds, determined our fundamental thinking about human life and how we assess its value.”
—Terence Dick for Akimbo

“In this philosophically ambitious and deeply personal book, Joel Michael Reynolds exposes the ableist mistake that has afflicted philosophy at least since Socrates…anyone committed to understanding what disability justice requires should read this book.”
—Erik Parens, The Hastings Center

“A critical, detailed interrogation of the overly simplified way in which disability is widely perceived.”
—H-Net Reviews

“Reynolds is the perfect guide to take us through debates surrounding disability and moral philosophy, debates based on unjust assumptions made millennia ago.”
—Combined Academic Publishers

“A thought-provoking and important book.”
—Kim Q. Hall, University of Alberta

“Reynolds carefully builds his arguments…[and] novel phenomenological examinations of pain and disability.”
—Samantha Berry-Sullivan, Utica University

“In a book that is both refreshing and hopeful, Reynolds offers a novel approach [to thinking about pain, disability, and ability].”
—Nancy Hansen, University of Manitoba

  • Named an “Essential 2022 Read” by Combined Academic Publishers
  • Review Essay Symposium in Puncta: A Journal of Critical Phenomenology with responses by:
    • Eva Feder Kittay, Kim Q. Hall, Jane Dryden, and Licia Carlson
  • Reviewed in The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Radical Philosophy Review, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, and Choice Reviews: Humanities
  • Author Meets Critics Book Panel: Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
  • Author Meets Critics Book Panel: Eastern American Philosophical Association
  • Interviewed by Elizabeth Barnes, The Philosopher
  • Interviewed by Autumn Wilke, The New Books Network
  • Interviewed by George Yancy, Truthout
  • Interviewed by Brandon Absher and Jake M. Bartholomew, Radical Philosophy Hour
  • Interviewed by Christine Wisehart, Examining Ethics
    Interviewed by PJ Wehry, Chasing Leviathan
  • Interviewed by Louise Kinross, Bloom
  • Interviewed by Leigh Johnson, Rick Lee, & Charles Peterson, Hotel Bar Sessions


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The Disability Bioethics Reader

Image of book cover of "The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by Joel MIchael Reynolds and Christine Wieseler. Aside from a thin yellow band of color at the top, the cover background is an impressionistic, almost water-color combination of blue and light blue. It feels very organic, as if the painter was trying to capture the random falling of water droplets.


1st edition released in 2022 from Routledge
2nd edition under contract and forthcoming in early 2027!

The Disability Bioethics Reader is the first introduction to the field of bioethics presented through the lens of critical disability studies and the philosophy of disability. It is designed with the diverse needs of college, university, and medical educators across fields and specialties.

Praise for The Disability Bioethics Reader

“Covers an impressive range of topics…[and] a wealth of diversity in issues, perspectives, and arguments…Overall, this book is an excellent resource, and should be considered by those designing university courses relating to bioethics and medical law and ethics.”
—Heloise Robinson, University of Oxford

“The Disability Bioethics Reader provides a much-needed course correction for the field [of bioethics] and contains context that should be provided via graduate and undergraduate bioethics courses, medical school curricula, and continuing medical education courses. Practitioners, educators, and scholars alike would benefit from the authors’ careful consideration of the intersections between bioethics and disability.”
—Heather Swadley, Lehigh University

  • Reviewed in Medical Law Review, Medical Law International, and International Journal for Feminist Approaches to Bioethics
  • Selected Book Panel, Society for Philosophy and Disability, Pacific American Philosophical Association, 2023