Autism History

Though our understanding of autism has greatly expanded, many autistic individuals are still missed or misdiagnosed. This highly accessible book clarifies many ways that autism can present, particularly in people who camouflage to hide their autistic traits.

Author Angela Gachassin shares the moving chronicle of her and her son's daily experiences as they struggle to conquer his autism symptoms. Glenn was a nonverbal child diagnosed with severe autism at the tender age of two. Yet with very little help from doctors, Angela incorporated lifelong skills and strategies into his daily life, which allowed him to live with endless possibilities to soar.

What is autism: a lifelong disability or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is both of these things and more - and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. Wired reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years.

As a boy, Raun Kaufman was diagnosed by multiple experts as severely autistic, with an IQ below 30, and destined to spend his life in an institution. Years later, Raun graduated with a degree in biomedical ethics from Brown University and has become a passionate and articulate autism expert and educator with no trace of his former condition. Thanks to the Son-Rise Program, a revolutionary method created by his parents, Raun experienced a full recovery from autism.

Andrew Wakefield reveals the inside story of desperate parents trying to help their autistic children, only to be labeled as abusers by social workers, medical professionals, and the courts. As the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders grows each year, new discoveries and controversies arise. Andrew Wakefield explores many of these in his thorough investigation of the recent trial case of the “Arizona 5,” which destroyed an Arizona family.

From a neurologist and the award-winning author of The Sleeping Beauties, a meticulous and compassionate exploration of how our culture of medical diagnosis can harm, rather than help, patients. We live in an age of diagnosis. Conditions like ADHD and autism are on the rapid rise, while new...

Move beyond conventional thinking about autism. . . . After years of treating patients and analyzing scientific data, prominent Harvard researcher and clinician Dr. Martha Herbert offers a revolutionary new view of autism and a transformative strategy for dealing with it. Autism is not a...

FINALIST FOR THE BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARD NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Parents . . . you will be wowed and awed by [Dr. Shefali]." —Oprah Winfrey As seen on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday, a radically transformative plan that shows parents how to raise children to be their best, truest...

Unlock the healing power of cannabis medicine and discover the cutting-edge science behind its remarkable impact on human health. Millions of people around the world are healing illnesses with cannabis. Nonetheless, many physicians remain reluctant to discuss cannabis medicine with their...

In 1930s and 1940s Vienna, child psychiatrist Hans Asperger sought to define autism as a diagnostic category, aiming to treat those children, usually boys, he deemed capable of participating fully in society. Depicted as a compassionate and devoted researcher, Asperger was in fact deeply influenced by Nazi psychiatry. Although he did offer individualized care to children he deemed promising, he also prescribed harsh institutionalization and even transfer to Spiegelgrund for children with greater disabilities, who, he held, could not integrate into the community.

In this book, the author offers a raw and unfiltered glimpse into her own experience with autism, sharing her thoughts and emotions in real time. With pain, agitation, humor, and solution as her guiding principles, she bares her soul and takes listeners on a journey through the often-turbulent waters of neurodivergence.

“Bold, daring, graceful, and engrossing.” —Bobbie Ann Mason “This book will knock your socks off….A first novel that sings with talent.” —Clyde Edgerton In his phenomenal debut novel—a mesmerizing literary thriller about the bond between two brothers and the evil they face in a...

"I hope this book inspires you to overcome challenges and make a positive difference in the world," —Prominent autistic American scientist and animal behaviorist Temple Grandin, 30th hero in this New York Times bestselling picture book biography series for ages 5 to 9, adapted for audio. This...

Winner of the History of Science Society's 2022 Davis Prize How one mother challenged the medical establishment and misconceptions about autistic children and their parents In the early 1960s, Massachusetts writer and homemaker Clara Park and her husband took their 3-year-old daughter, Jessy, to...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological and developmental disorder that begins early in childhood and lasts throughout a person's life. With the help of time, we now have a better understanding of the disease spectrum. Those observations made by the early pioneers have evolved as breakthroughs in the disease management process. In exploring past human competency levels and myths of autism, an emphasis of significance is placed on increasing awareness and the reaction factors to seeking treatment, as the scope of early intervention.

“Profoundly honest, shapely, ambitious, engrossing.”—New York Times Book Review From bestselling author Sue Miller comes a masterful novel about the life of a large family that is deeply bonded by the stranger in their midst—an autistic child. The whole world could not have broken the...

Autism has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, thanks to dramatically increasing rates of diagnosis, extensive organizational mobilization, journalistic coverage, biomedical research, and clinical innovation. Understanding Autism, a social history of the expanding diagnostic category of this contested illness, takes a close look at the role of emotion - specifically, of parental love - in the intense and passionate work of biomedical communities investigating autism.

From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke. Under the One Child Policy, everyone...

When Paul Collins’s son Morgan was two years old, he could read, spell, and perform multiplication tables in his head … but not answer to his own name. A casual conversation—or any social interaction that the rest of us take for granted—will, for Morgan, always be a cryptogram that must be painstakingly decoded. He lives in a world of his own: an autistic world. In Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins melds a memoir of his son’s autism with a journey into this realm of permanent outsiders.

""A beautiful, big-hearted book with important lessons embedded in compelling stories of two irresistible girls. Expertly executed and movingly realized.” —New York Times Book Review Cammie McGovern follows up her breakout young adult debut, Say What You Will, with this powerful and...