Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

by Steve Silberman

Book Overview

A New York Times bestseller

Winner of the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction

A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently.

What is autism? A lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158333467X
• ISBN13: 9781583334676
• Release Date: August 2015
• Publisher: Avery Publishing Group
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Worst book on Autism

TW: misinformation, mention of WW 2 details It took everything in me to finish this book. Perhaps I had too high an expectation, though I had never heard of it and going purely from the cover and summary decided to read it, this has been hands down the WORST book I've read thus far this year. And there are some books I've read that I haven't reviewed, because they're comfort books and never truly stop being read by me. Yet this book I spit out of my mouth and walk over. Firstly, the introduction is supposed to tell us about why and how it came about that a person would have written a book titled: NeuroTribes. It is an easy assumption that we will be looking at the variances and nuances of being neurodiverse, likely especially considering the word useage of "tribes" those closely related, but not the same as, autism. But no. We are instead given a very brief history of the author and then the great Hans Asperger (written only once, heretofore referred to by HA) is introduced as the father and amazing detective of the autistic brain. What a GREAT guy! Chapter one starts us off differently, and I settle myself in to have my mind changed. Discussions of pseudoscience and pseudomedication for the purposes of "curing" autism and how they take advantage of families is discussed, several families come to touching realizations. Then we are jerked back to an obscure figure in history, being convinced he is autistic and important. (Spoiler: we'll never know, he didn't study neurology, how is this relative? Second spoiler: it's not.) Then we come back to HA. I wait for the truth to be told. It is not. I wait longer. And longer. And longer. Around the time we reach the year 1941 in his gushing history of HA, I realize that he has not mentioned the Nazis or Hitler once. Your average layperson may not be able to put their finger on the exact dates of the second World War and the cruelties of the Nazis, but especially due to my heritage which influences my reading, I am. Indeed we should have been hearing about Hitler the entire time. HA was a known supporter of the Nazi regime, believed in a cure for autism, and decided which children were worth the studying and torture and which were sent straight to concentration camps. Don't worry though, the children who survived HA got to the camps when he had no more use for them. Instead, I began to count after the first time the awful Nazi regime was finally mentioned. I didn't have to take my shoes off. And then, there is the mention of the TRUE mother of autism: Grunya Sukhareva! Aha! So he DOES acknowledge that she wrote extensively on autism two decades prior and that HA had likely read her work! So now it will all be fixed. No. It wasn't. She is barely acknowledged as having studied it two decades prior to HA, and then we are rushed on to remember how amazing HA is, and how he just "came up" these perfect terms and ways of testing both male and female subjects- though female were harder due to stereotypical patriarchal training of young women and girls. Right... Even though he read her work, which is exactly what we JUST finally got to in today's time, he discovered and named everything. Instead, he wrote off girls and women having it and studied and believed only boys had it and it was a childhood affliction. The second half of the book is completely different. Most of the "historical" part of the book has absolutely nothing to do with autism nor its discovery. And he somehow manages to speak about the entire decade of power that Hitler had, without saying his name more than a handful of times. Yet everything around Hitler was spoken about. HA's children's clinic, (read: eugenics research and child torture), was a beacon of light saving lives. It was not only disbelieving but beyond frustrating as I know not everyone reading the book has my knowledge of the actual history. I was let down so hardly by this catastrophe of a book. Every chapter was written differently, there was no coherence t