by Barry M. Prizant with Tom Fields-Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 2015
A truly impactful, necessary book.
A remarkable new approach to autism.
The key to successfully connecting with and helping children with autism is deceptively simple: don’t make assumptions, ask them questions about their feelings and behavior, listen closely to their responses, and try to understand the reasoning behind their actions. A little bit of empathy and respect goes a long way. The traditional methods of understanding and treating autism may be more harmful than we thought, argues leading autism expert Prizant (co-author: The SCERTS Model, 2005, etc.). Attempts to “normalize” children or to expect them to understand complex social and moral nuances may, in fact, prove detrimental to their happiness and impede their abilities to interact with others. Rather than suffering from an intellectual disability, the author writes, these children struggle with what he calls a “disability of trust.” From their perspective, adults often make statements that are not strictly true or that omit information that most of us take for granted but that a child with autism perceives as vital. Many conflicts that arise may be caused by this type of “misunderstanding,” in which the rules, especially social ones, are not outlined in comprehensive detail. Backed by cogent, compassionate anecdotes drawn from his many years in the field, Prizant also points out that many of the behaviors that people without autism may label as odd—like echolalia—stem from a child’s attempt to cope with a stressful situation, such as overstimulation or frustration at not being able to communicate their feelings or needs. Instead of dismissing these “regulating” behaviors as weird or even unacceptable, adults should embrace them as constructive methods by which children can return to homeostasis. By admitting, “it’s not you, it’s me,” we can reorient the way we perceive and embrace people with autism, helping them live joyous, meaningful lives. As the author wisely notes, we must embrace their uniquely human experience, not subvert it.
A truly impactful, necessary book.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7623-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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