by Temple Grandin with Betsy Lerner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2022
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
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by Temple Grandin with Ann D. Koffsky
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New York Times Bestseller
by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
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Best Books Of 2023
New York Times Bestseller
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Lulu Miller illustrated by Kate Samworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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