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THE AUTISM REVOLUTION

Name: THE AUTISM REVOLUTION
Author: Martha Herbert
ISBN: 978-0-345-52719-6

WHOLE-BODY STRATEGIES FOR MAKING LIFE ALL IT CAN BE

by Martha Herbert & Karen Weintraub ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2012

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A neurologist breaks with professional orthodoxy to shed new light on the diagnosis and treatment of autism.

In her debut, Herbert (Neurology/Harvard Medical School) embraces a new framework that goes beyond her experience as a physician and researcher to embrace the hard-won knowledge of patients and their families. She writes that she and her colleagues are now investigating “all sorts of brain and body indicators,” including brain scans, environmental factors, metabolism, etc. The author explains that the more she worked with patients the more she was faced with a choice—“ ‘to see what I believed' or 'believe what I see.’ ” Either she would accept traditional wisdom that autism was a genetically determined, incurable brain disorder or recognize “the extraordinary capabilities and changes [she] saw in her patients.” Taking the latter path, Herbert began to reject the view that autism is a primarily a genetically determined, neurological disorder. She reports anecdotal evidence of remarkable improvement in autistic children who appear to have digestive problems assimilating gluten or casein when these were eliminated from their diet. Herbert also notes that neurologists are “slowly recognizing the many crucial roles played by glial cells” in the brain. These make up 85 percent of the brain and play a critical role in the brain's immune system and facilitate the functioning of neurons. The author speculates that autism may be caused when they malfunction rather than by neurological problems. Her message to caregivers is clear and simple: Autistic symptoms should be treated using a whole body approach—“go for the extraordinary.” An important book with broader implications than its specific subject.

Pub Date: April 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-345-52719-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012

Categories:

HEALTH & FITNESS | PSYCHOLOGY

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MASTERY

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...

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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

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP

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THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE
by Robert Greene

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by Robert Greene

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WHY WE SWIM

by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

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A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.

For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.