A Perfect World

A father explores his son’s autism, and delivers a hopeful message.

A Perfect World is a unique international survey, drawing on scores of lengthy interviews conducted over four years, as well as being a moving family memoir. It offers new insights on the diagnosis of autism, intervention therapy, research and special-needs learning. It is a story that will appeal to parents, teachers, community workers, health specialists and fans of travel writing alike.

"With remarkable erudition and literary elegance, David Cohen, the father of an autistic boy named Eliot, has crafted an extraordinary account of autism in his own family, and in the world. In this engaging and honest book, Cohen shows autism in all its vicissitudes ­ in England, New Zealand, Korea, the US and Israel.

A gifted writer, Cohen moves so gracefully across narratives, scientific discourses, artistic genres, historical periods and continents that you hardly notice the full force of his prose until the conclusion when, suddenly, it hits you: Cohen has made us see autism as an essential part of the human condition." Professor Roy Richard Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism, Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University, USA