The introduction explains the selection and range of countries that are covered by the book and offers a brief historiography of the field. It also discusses the use of life stories in intellectual disability history and analyses the differing roles that eugenics had placed in this history. An overview of chapters is then followed by a discussion of the complexities of language in intellectual disability history generally and in a transnational approach in particular. This section then brings some of the main themes of the book, in particular the role of families, problems of exclusion and inequality, the formation of out-groups and the question of progress. Finally the section discusses future possible transnational approaches in this field of study.