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The Story of Autism
Crown
January 2016
On Sale: January 19, 2016
688 pages
ISBN: 0307985679
EAN: 9780307985675
Kindle: B00WPQ0NY0
Hardcover / e-Book
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Self-Help Health
Nearly seventy-five years ago, Donald Triplett of Forest,
Mississippi, became the first child diagnosed with autism.
Beginning with his family’s odyssey, In a Different Key
tells the extraordinary story of this often misunderstood
condition, and of the civil rights battles waged by the
families of those who have it. Unfolding over decades, it is a beautifully rendered history
of ordinary people determined to secure a place in the world
for those with autism—by liberating children from dank
institutions, campaigning for their right to go to school,
challenging expert opinion on what it means to have autism,
and persuading society to accept those who are different. It is the story of women like Ruth Sullivan, who rebelled
against a medical establishment that blamed cold and
rejecting “refrigerator mothers” for causing autism; and of
fathers who pushed scientists to dig harder for treatments. Many others played starring roles too: doctors like Leo
Kanner, who pioneered our understanding of autism; lawyers
like Tom Gilhool, who took the families’ battle for
education to the courtroom; scientists who sparred over how
to treat autism; and those with autism, like Temple Grandin,
Alex Plank, and Ari Ne’eman, who explained their inner
worlds and championed the philosophy of neurodiversity. This is also a story of fierce controversies—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; to stark disagreements about
whether scientists should pursue a cure for autism. 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
compelling evidence that Hans Asperger, discoverer of the
syndrome named after him, participated in the Nazi program
that consigned disabled children to death. 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 a
cadre of people with autism push not simply for inclusion,
but for a new understanding of autism: as difference rather
than disability.
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