In a Different Key
The Story of Autism
-
- 279,00 Kč
-
- 279,00 Kč
Publisher Description
The stunning history of autism as it has been discovered and felt by parents, children and doctors
Nearly seventy-five years ago, Donald Triplett of Forest, Mississippi became the first child diagnosed with autism. In a Different Key tells the extraordinary story of the world his diagnosis created - a riveting human drama that takes us across continents and through some of the great social movements of the twentieth century.
The history of autism is, above all, the story of families fighting for a place in the world for their children. It is the story of women like Ruth Sullivan, who rebelled against a medical establishment that blamed "refrigerator mothers" for causing autism, of fathers who pushed scientists to dig harder for treatments, of parents who forced schools to accept their children. But many others played starring roles too: doctors like Leo Kanner, who pioneered our understanding of autism, scientists who sparred over how to treat autism, and those with autism, like Temple Grandin and Ari Ne'eman, who explained their inner worlds and championed a philosophy of 'neurodiversity'.
This is also a story of fierce controversy: from the question of whether there is truly an autism 'epidemic', and whether vaccines played a part in it, to scandals involving 'facilitated communication', one of many treatments that have proved to be blind alleys. And there are dark turns too: we learn about experimenters feeding LSD to children with autism, or shocking them with electricity to change their behavior; and the authors reveal, for the first time, that Hans Asperger, discoverer of the syndrome named after him, may have cooperated with the Nazis in sending disabled children to their deaths.
By turns intimate and panoramic, In a Different Key takes us on a journey from an era when families were shamed and children were condemned to institutions, to one in which parents and people with autism push not simply for inclusion, but for a new understanding of autism: as difference rather than disability.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalists Donvan and Zucker's tremendous study keeps autism at its center while telling an extraordinary tale of social change. The authors follow evolving cultural responses to autism and autism spectrum disorders, including intolerance, a desperate quest for successful treatments, and the currently high level of awareness which doesn't always prevent misunderstanding. The only shaky aspects of this swooping narrative are Donvan and Zucker's questionable, if not anachronistic, attempts to diagnose historical figures. Their work's strength is a careful delineation of autism's contemporary ramifications, including the sometimes disputed statistics and the vaccine scare that first made headlines in the late 1990s. The authors give thoughtful consideration to the array of treatments for autism that have been explored; the 1960s, for example, saw a now-shocking trend of LSD treatments. Viewed as a whole, the narrative ultimately reveals a transition from an emphasis on treating individual cases to a more society-wide effort for advocacy and inclusion an effort that this book will do much to advance.