A thoughtful examination of how minds work.
An exploration of the richness of neurodiversity.
In her memoir Thinking in Pictures, Grandin, who was not formally diagnosed with autism until she was an adult, defined herself as a visual thinker, a concept she expands in her latest examination of neurodiverse minds. “The world,” she writes, “comes to me in a series of associated visual images, like scrolling through Google images or watching the short videos on Instagram or TikTok.” Drawing on her own experiences and research as well as the findings of psychologists, neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, and educators, the author argues persuasively for the need to encourage visual and spatial thinkers who can make crucial contributions to engineering, problem-solving, inventing, and creating. Because education privileges verbal thinkers by assessing learning through written tests, and because curricula have dropped “hands-on” classes such as shop, mechanics, and home economics, Grandin asserts that visual thinkers are neither identified nor given adequate resources to develop their talents and skills. In fact, their difficulty with verbal thinking often relegates them to remedial classes. Grandin reveals, however, that many innovators in the arts and sciences and in technology were visual and spatial thinkers—and likely also on the autism spectrum— including Thomas Edison, Michelangelo, Alan Turing, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Albert Einstein. “Genius,” she writes, “requires not only intelligence and creativity but divergent thinking as well.” Grandin cites research to support the idea that combining people with different neurological strengths makes a team more successful than one composed of homogeneous thinkers. Some famous collaborators, such as Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, serve as evidence of the brilliance that results when “a verbal thinker and a spatial thinker” work together. This book itself serves as another example of a fruitful collaboration: The author submits her work to her editor and co-author, Lerner, a verbal thinker and “the master organizer of information,” who “teases out the stories behind my technical writing” and gives it shape and coherence.
A thoughtful examination of how minds work.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0593418369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
Yes: it's high time for a de-romanticized, de-mythified, close-up retelling of the U.S. Space Program's launching—the inside story of those first seven astronauts.
But no: jazzy, jivey, exclamation-pointed, italicized Tom Wolfe "Mr. Overkill" hasn't really got the fight stuff for the job. Admittedly, he covers all the ground. He begins with the competitive, macho world of test pilots from which the astronauts came (thus being grossly overqualified to just sit in a controlled capsule); he follows the choosing of the Seven, the preparations for space flight, the flights themselves, the feelings of the wives; and he presents the breathless press coverage, the sudden celebrity, the glorification. He even throws in some of the technology. But instead of replacing the heroic standard version with the ring of truth, Wolfe merely offers an alternative myth: a surreal, satiric, often cartoony Wolfe-arama that, especially since there isn't a bit of documentation along the way, has one constantly wondering if anything really happened the way Wolfe tells it. His astronauts (referred to as "the brethren" or "The True Brothers") are obsessed with having the "right stuff" that certain blend of guts and smarts that spells pilot success. The Press is a ravenous fool, always referred to as "the eternal Victorian Gent": when Walter Cronkite's voice breaks while reporting a possible astronaut death, "There was the Press the Genteel Gent, coming up with the appropriate emotion. . . live. . . with no prompting whatsoever!" And, most off-puttingly, Wolfe presumes to enter the minds of one and all: he's with near-drowing Gus Grissom ("Cox. . . That face up there!—it's Cox. . . Cox knew how to get people out of here! . . . Cox! . . ."); he's with Betty Grissom angry about not staying at Holiday Inn ("Now. . . they truly owed her"); and, in a crude hatchet-job, he's with John Glenn furious at Al Shepard's being chosen for the first flight, pontificating to the others about their licentious behavior, or holding onto his self-image during his flight ("Oh, yes! I've been here before! And I am immune! I don't get into corners I can't get out of! . . . The Presbyterian Pilot was not about to foul up. His pipeline to dear Lord could not be clearer"). Certainly there's much here that Wolfe is quite right about, much that people will be interested in hearing: the P-R whitewash of Grissom's foul-up, the Life magazine excesses, the inter-astronaut tensions. And, for those who want to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt throughout, there are emotional reconstructions that are juicily shrill.
But most readers outside the slick urban Wolfe orbit will find credibility fatally undermined by the self-indulgent digressions, the stylistic excesses, and the broadly satiric, anti-All-American stance; and, though The Right Stuff has enough energy, sass, and dirt to attract an audience, it mostly suggests that until Wolfe can put his subject first and his preening writing-persona second, he probably won't be a convincing chronicler of anything much weightier than radical chic.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1979
ISBN: 0312427565
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1979
BOOK TO SCREEN
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