just got back from a hot summer in Paris and read this every night - a bit lush for my taste sometimes, but I really got into the layers of architecture, food, urban design, political satire, word-play and sex...it's a really original book, violent and brilliant, if a bit immature in places ( understandable for a writer still in his 20's I guess ). Some of my friends agreed, some disagreed. The chapters on courtesans and Turkish baths rock!

This is the most brilliant book on Paris ever written in English - quirky, infuriating, uneven, but definately original and fierce and permeated with amazing erudition. Osborne has written for the Voice here, the New Republic and Lingua Franca - he's a superb essayist all round

I am a professional psychologist and also the mother of a 19-year-old son with Asperger's Syndrome. I found the interviews in this book with individuals diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome interesting, which is why I gave it two stars. However, the book is ultimately infuriating because I can't figure out what the author's ultimate point about Asperger's is. He seems to say: (1) this is a real disorder; (2) it is a neurological disorder; (3) these people are really just harmless eccentrics; (3) the disorder exists partly, and maybe primarily, because of American notions of what is and isn't normal. Interestingly, those he interviews or discusses who fit closest to his view of harmless eccentrics who should be left alone, such as pianist Glenn Gould, are those with either remarkable and marketable talents or independent incomes. Those who would have to cope with life unbuffered by either talent or income fare much less well.

This is a look at Asperger's from a different angle. If you know someone with the syndrome you'll find it helpful for understanding them. As the parent of a child with Asperger's I found it insightful, enjoyable, even amusing. It was interesting to see how others cope with this, and gave me lots to think about. We've chosen a different route for our child than the intensive therapy and medication regimes that are popular today. This book addressed the issue in a unique way that I found very helpful.

There are plenty of books available that give advice on treating Asperger's. Osborne writes about what it's like to actually live with it in a society that isn't always kind to those who are different.

One of the syndromes medical students learn about is Medical Student's Disease: one thinks one has the particular malady being taught about. Symptoms are diverse, as all of us have some sort of ache or pain now and then; and certainly all of us have mental symptoms, too, whether these be just ups and downs, occasionally hearing ourselves being called when no one is calling, obsessive interest in an oddity that turns into a hobby, bursts of energy or self-esteem, and so on. Lawrence Osborne has taken on the task of reporting about Asperger Syndrome in _American Normal: The Hidden World of Asperger Syndrome_ (Copernicus Books) and has filled it with his own symptoms tending toward the condition: he is fixated on the television program _Iron Chef_, for instance, and he is fond of lingering in airports, and as a child he was nuts about playing the lute. He is willing to call these "Aspergerish" (and he has met people with the diagnosis that share this sort of trait), but he wisely withholds the diagnosis from himself. He gets along far too well; like so many other diagnoses, Asperger's can't apply if one is unimpaired socially or occupationally, and Osborne shows he can get along socially even with some very peculiar people, and he can write with wonderful clarity and vigor. His book goes a long way to illustrating the condition, even if the illness, and the philosophy behind diagnosing it, remain largely unexplained.

The illness is specific, with a definition of check-off symptoms in psychiatry's standard diagnostic manual. It is probably a high-functioning form of autism, but not as crippling. People with Asperger's are often highly intelligent, and although they are frequently preoccupied with one area of restricted interest in which they have sometimes astounding intellectual capacity, they can blend into society with bumbling facility. However, they can't do things that the rest of us take for granted, like looking at a human face and knowing what emotions are being shown. Osborne gets to interview or research patients who have, for instance, memorized all of _Babylon 5_, or every fact about hotels in their state, or about vacuum cleaners. It might be that Thomas Jefferson had the illness, and maybe Albert Einstein and Béla Bartók. The main Asperger poster boy is the famous pianist Glenn Gould, who gets a chapter here. Gould certainly had the concentration on a limited sphere of interest; his recordings, especially of Bach, are among the most famous of any classical records. Gould displayed (or perhaps harnessed) the social inability of Asperger patients in an unusual way; retiring from the concert hall, he tirelessly argued for the virtues of electronically recorded performances.

This is not a book of firsthand experience with the illness, although Osborne wisely lets us in on enough of his own idiosyncrasies to show how close to normal Asperger people are. And it is not a book by a medical expert or specialist. Osborne is simply a curious person and a gifted writer who had an opportunity to investigate something that took his fancy, an interesting illness, and was able to interview some interesting people who suffer, or who thrive, from it. (One of them told him, "Normalcy is highly overrated, you know.") _American Normal_ is mostly his personal observations, and it is very entertaining, as well as sympathetic and informative.

THE POISONED EMBRACE is about something called sexual pessimism, which the author never defines adequately so that one can understand what exactly it is that he is refuting and explaining.

Offered here are some nonsensical and boring anecdotes and speculating psycho-babble about some archetypes that are never presented in a coherent light with any percievable "proof of thesis" scheme attached to them.

This is that unusual mix : a scholarly intellectual polemic which is also hilarious in a dry Brit way - by a young scholar-writer who I hope will soon publish something else soon. The stuff on witchcraft and the conquest of the New World is fascinating and really elegantly done