An excellent and straightforward primer on the hows and whys of autism, written by two of the leading autism researchers. If you're new to the subject, then this overview is a good way to get up to speed.

I do have one complaint: [$] for a 113 page paperback is extortionate, plain and simple -- especially when it's largely being charged to the parents of disabled children. As a writer myself, I know that this is not the author's fault... it's the publisher. OUP, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Next edition, do the decent thing and drop it down to $...

Still, don't let this complaint put you off. If you have a family member or acquaintance who has recently been diagnosed with autism, don't hesitate: just buy it.

This is perhaps the definitive source on the nature of autism. I particularly enjoyed the bit on cognitive neuroscience.

An ideal 1st book for those who have recently been diagnosed, and for family and friends.This is easily digested,but has not been "dumbed down".Written in a positive way it contaians some sensible advice about coping with TS in the real world.Written by 2 of Englands top specialists in Tourette Syndrome ,it is a book that gives you the confidence to question the doctors,and answer those posed by people who want to know more about your problrms.The extensive bibliography gives many leads for anyone wanting a more indepth understanding of the syndrome,and the suggested "introduction card" deserves a special credit of its own.This is a book I would recommend to who is interested in the syndrome,at any level.

I used this book to help me in writing a paper for one of my psychology classes at a university. It was very useful in helping me decipher a lot of the medical terms that are associated with the syndrome, and also to clear up many of the myths regarding Tourette's Syndrome. It explained the cause, symptoms, treatment and family issues in a way that was very easy to understand. This book would be very helpful to someone who knows a person with Tourette's Syndrome in the understanding of their disease. There is a lot of good information, and also resources to point you in the direction of other research. I learned several things by reading this book, but I think that the most important thing that this book offers is that it clears up the myths and stereotypes that afflict people with this syndrome. I would highly recommend "The Facts".

I am father of a mild autistic 4 years old kid. My son drops away a lot of autistic features now after diagnosis at 2 yrs old. He is OK for a lot of things. Now verbal at nearly same age, behaviour OK without any hyper or strange things, however, social and temper are the areas need to be improved. With the recommendation of his doctor, I bought this book here. The aim of the book is to teach the kid to know what is proper feeling with diffeerent environment or situations. The book gives me hints how to tell him what are expressions, how to react with strange things or environments,.. etc...

In particular that we live in Hong Kong, some illustrations and drawings are not appropriate to our urban city. ( e.g. what is your feeling when you see a snake in the grass ? ((( sorry we cannot see any snake in HK )) ) It is still OK with most of the situations given.

It is good for young mild autistic, I have shared my book with other families with same "problem" I am also a vice chaiman of an association of autistic kids parents in Hong Kong.

I am very appreciated that the publisher will send you another "book" of worksheets that you do not need to write on the orginal book. You can use that worksheets to teach your kid or class. the publisher gives you right to photocopy the worksheets as long as you entitled the original book! These worksheets sent to me or any buyer free of charge via airmail ( all free of charge when you request, and I got it after three weeks when I requested via email.. given by the book.

Worth a try but not cheap though. All autism books are expensive!

I have applied the principles of "A.B.A." for approximately 10 years. I have worked with numerous families and children who have been afflicted with Autism. I also try to stay up to date on the newest techniques and reading materials. I found this book facsinating and have begun to apply many of these techniques with the children I am currently working with. I work with preschool and school aged children. When these principles are applied correctly I have seen amazing results. I have found this book extremely helpful and only wish I could have found it sooner.

This book contains a great program for teaching young children with autism how to interpret facial expressions and other social cues. It is aimed at young children.

If you have a teenager with autism, you may need more help, since the typical teen's social environment is much more complex than that of a younger child. This of course begs the question of why anyone would wait until their child was a teenager to start addressing his/her autism. One should instead start as early as possible, preferably well before 3 years of age, and definitely before 5 years of age. The longer you wait, the more difficult it gets, and the less promising the prognosis.

Is this book the only resource you will need to address your child's autism? Most definitely not! You should read "Let Me Hear Your Voice" by Catherine Maurice, and you should find a parent support group near you (check www.feat.org for a list by region). ABA treatment is a must, and some children also benefit from changes in diet, megavitamin therapy, and other treatments. ABA (especially), diet, and vitamins helped several children in my community go from a diagnosis of autism to testing in the normal range. But they all started very aggressive treatment early: before the age of 4.

So, read this book, but also gather information in the area of ABA, diet, and vitamins. Find other parents who are aggressively addressing their child's autism--you will need the mutual support. Above all, hit your child's autism with everything you can as early as you possibly can! There is not yet a guaranteed cure, but you can give your child a fighting chance of attaining a normal level of functioning.

This is the first book to bring together classic and contemporary readings illustrating the new subdiscipline, evolutionary psychopathology.

Psychology has been one of the slowest of the biological sciences to be "Darwinized", that is, integrated with evolutionary theory. A major milestone in this transition was the publication of Barkow et al's The Adapted Mind in 1992, which has become a seminal book for the new field of evolutionary psychology. Baron-Cohen's new book The Maladapted Mind takes this approach one step further in highlighting how mechanisms in the brain which normally enable us to be well-adapted to survival in our environment can occasionally malfunction, leading individuals to develop what we recognize as psychiatric disorder. Each chapter demonstrates how evolutionary arguments are being brought to bear on the study of a different psychiatric condition or pathological behavior. These include anxiety, depression, psychopathic personality and autism. This new framework should lead to new insights into the aetiology of psychiatric conditions, and at the same time illustrate how the study of such mental abnormalities can reveal the existence of basic neurocognitive mechanisms in the 'normal' mind that have been overlooked.

This book is aimed primarily at advanced students and researchers in the fields of psychiatry, abnormal psychology, biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive science.

Contents:

S. Baron-Cohen: Preface: Why Evolutionary Psychopathology? R. Nesse, G. Williams: Are Mental Disorders Diseases? M. McGuire, I. Marks, R. Nesse, A. Troisi: Evolutionary Biology: A Basic Science for Psychiatry? D. Wilson: Evolutionary Epidemiology: Darwinian Theory in the Service of Medicine and Psychiatry I. Marks, R. Nesse: Fear and Fitness: An Evolutionary Analysis of Anxiety Disorders R. Nesse: An Evolutionary Perspective on Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia R. James Blair: A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Morality: Investigating the Psychopath M. Daly, M. Wilson: Evolutionary Social Psychology and Family Homicide L. Mealey: The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model L.A. Dugatkin: The Evolution of the "Con-Artist" S. Baron-Cohen: How to Build a Baby That Can Read Minds: Cognitive Mechanisms in Mindreading J. Price, L. Sloman, R. Gardner, P. Gilbert, P. Rohde: The Social Competition Hypothesis of Depression M. McGuire, A. Troisi, M. Raleigh: Depression in an Evolutionary Context.

Just like most books of collected readings, Classic and Contemp. Readings presents many conflicting view points that can either confuse the reader or stimulate the reader (hopefully both). Some of the readings are relatively old so the language and ideas are a little archaic. All in all however the diverse readings represent a good majority of the ideas behind synaesthesia. This book is for serious exploration into synaesthesia.

I rely on customer reviews when deciding on a book. Apparently the three reviews I read that appeared to be helpful turned out to be a disappointment. This book is obviously written for someone with a very extensive vocabulary. It is filled with $10.00 words and ideas that are really hard to decipher. I was under the impression, via the other 3 reviews, that this book would provide an explanation of "mindblindness" in terms the average layman could understand. After reading the first two chapters, I had to go back and read them again and again. I suggest you try to find this one at the public library before you decide to permenantly add it to you own personal collection. Save your money and the shipping charges.

This book takes recent cognitive research findings and aligns it with the problems that autistics and other people with non-verbal learning disabilities have in correctly interpreting and responding to social situations. It was a fast read for me and very helpful in assisting me to understand that there is a physical cause for inability to respond appropriately to social situations by learning disabled people. The book actually gave me the intellectual key to forming an appropriate emotional response to LD individuals and in assisting them in learning how to respond appropriately to social situations.

Excellent discussion on eye contact and interpreting actions. Author also provides some interesting observations on intra species communication and how it relates to the evolution of human response in social situations.

Well worth the read if you work with people who have non-verbal learning disabilities or have a child with learning disabilities that encompass the spectrum of autistic disorders. Good tie in to language disabilities and discussion of temporal and frontal region of the brain.

Aimed at both professionals and the lay person, the author has managed to do a good job of straddling both worlds.

Recommended for those people who have managed to finally catch their breath and are over grieving from discovering the consequences of living with an LD individual, and who have managed to proceed to formulating a program of education, personal and familial response to non-verbal disabilities.

While the author made good points about eye contact and subsequent social knowledge, he did fail to discuss those social situations where eye contact would be considered to be aggressive rather than a bonding or friendly situation. Nor was there adequate discussion of social groups where the types of eye contact he discusses works opposite the general norm in the United States (ie: Native American Tribal culture).

Good material that serves as a starting point in putting together an education program for those individuals who haven't been able to absorb all those unwritten social rules which can make any learning disabled person an outcast.

Baron-Cohen presents a well thought out theory of autism firmly based on his own experimental evidence, as well as that of others. In brief, Baron Cohen postulates that autistic children lack the ability to interpret the mental states of others, and consequently cannot assign mental causes to the actions of others. He explains this in terms of autictics lacking certain postulated mental structures involved in what he calls "mind reading"; for instance, most autistic children do not seem to be able to follow the gaze of another person, a skill that Baron-Cohen believes is central to understanding another's intentions.

While I find his arguments well supported by the data, I do have some differences with him as to the primacy of causation in his model. I would suggest that the reason the analytic mechanisms are absent is that the underlying mental state are absent. For instance, in the writings of one noted high-funtioning autistic, Temple Grandin, she notes that certain mental states having to do with interpersonal relationships are simply unknown to her; she cannot really understand deep friendships and love. To me this suggests not merely the absence of an an analytic and conceptual mechanism, but also the absence of certain physiological correlates that underly the emotions that are a large componant of social attachements.

Regardless, "Mindblindness" is an excellent addition to the theoretical literature of autism and serves as a superb summary of much of the experimental data as well.